Agenda item

Pensions Administration Report

(To receive a report from the Yunus Gajra (The Business Development Manager – West Yorkshire Pension Fund), which updates the committee on current administration issues)

Minutes:

The Business Development Manager (West Yorkshire Pension Fund) updated the Board on current administration issues within the fund.

 

Attention was drawn the two underperforming Key Performance Indicators (KPI)'s:

 

·         DG Nomination Form Received – It was noted that most of the data had been received, but records had not yet been updated, meaning that data would be available if it was required. The Business Development Manager was not concerned by the KPI not being reached in this instance.

·         Monthly Posting – This was due to the amount of queries received on returns from Employers. It was noted that the percentage for monthly posting had increased quite significantly despite the target not being met.

 

The following points were also highlighted:

 

·         Figures showed a reduction in the active scheme membership, which was due to backlog of forms received from payroll providers.

·         Although the Overall Customer Satisfaction Score for April to June 2018 was 72.1%, there had only been one complaint received, which was regarding opting out of the scheme. It was noted that this was more of an employer issue.

·         The results of the employer survey had suggested that forms were not straightforward to fill in. The Committee were assured that this area was being investigated to see what improvements could be made to the forms.

·         20,506 Annual Benefit Statements (99.2% of the active membership) had been produced by the statutory deadline of 31st August. It was noted that employers were asked to submit their information as soon as possible due to the lead time taken to process the information.

·         25,960 Deferred benefit Statements had been produced by the statutory deadline, which represented 100% of the deferred membership.

·         West Yorkshire Pension Fund (WYPF) had taken on 6 additional Fire clients, and in addition, the London Borough of Hounslow had joined the West Yorkshire/Lincolnshire Pension Fund shared service partnership from 1st August 2018.

·         Recruitment was taking place to ensure that there would be no impact on existing clients and services as a result of the intake of new clients, including recruitment in Lincolnshire.

·         There was a new requirement to report on data quality and data score for The Pensions Regulator.  Authorities had been advised to adopt their own approach for scoring their 2017/18 conditional data for submission to the scheme return. A Data Governance Officer would be recruited to assist with this.

·         The WYPF had won in both of their two categories at the 2018 LAPF Awards, as well as being chosen as for the LGPS Fund of the year (assets over 2.5 billion) – Administration Award.

 

Questions and comments from members and officers included the following:

 

·         It was queried whether there were any reasons that the overall customer satisfaction score was lower between April to June in both 2017 and 2018. The Business Development Manager felt there was nothing specific that could be causing the lower percentage score.

·         It was questioned why there were 20,506 Annual Benefit Statements produced when figures showed that there were 25,239 active members in the scheme. The Business Development Manager explained that discrepancies were likely to be a result of some members having multiple employers within the scheme, and some due to contacts being lost. It was agreed that this would be looked into further.

·         In response to a question, it was explained that, where there was no current address, the Deferred Benefit Statements were produced but not sent out to members. 

·         It was clarified that the Fund was actively trying to trace the 'lost members', and was engaging with the Tracing Bureau to assist with this.

·         One member asked whether there would be an office in Hounslow following their joining the shared service partnership. It was noted that there would not be an office in Hounslow as there had been no staff TUPE'd over.

·         The Board congratulated the Administrator on their recent success at the LAPF awards.

·         Members were assured that the Guaranteed Minimum Pension reconciliation exercise was a priority in order to meet the deadline for sending the data to HMRC by the end of October 2018.

·         Officers were of the view that £2 tolerance was a reasonable amount for the Guaranteed Minimum Pension reconciliation exercise.

 

RESOLVED:

 

          That the report and comments made be noted.

 

Supporting documents:

 

 
 
dot

Original Text: