Agenda item

The Acting Pensions Manager presented the report.

He said that following the receipt of regulatory guidance work continued in-house to clear the backlog of cases relating to scheme transfers in and out and, separately, the membership update. Planned down days had been set aside to target specific work streams, and significant progress was now being made, which would be reflected in the next report to the Committee.

An outcome of the year-end process was that a training programme had been put in place for employers on the provision of accurate and timely data to the Fund. This will be spread over the next six months.

Pension Officers were currently supporting redundancy exercises at Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire Council and North Somerset Council by providing bulk calculations and information to individual members.

The Pension Regulator’s 2016 governance and administration survey had been completed and returned. The results would be reported to the next meeting of the Committee.

The restructuring of the Pensions Administration Team was well under way, and a number of manager and deputy manager appointments had been made. Internal staff moves should be completed by Christmas and backfill by the end of the financial year, so staffing should be up to full complement by the end of March. The new staffing structure would be reported to the next meeting of the Committee.

Members asked questions to which the Acting Pensions Manager responded.

Q: What was the reason for employers’ failure to submit full CARE data (paragraph 6.4, agenda page 110)?

A: B&NES and North Somerset both changed their payroll software, which caused some problems. The Administration Team was currently working with both these employers to resolve the problems.

Q:  The actual KPI figures for the past three months (agenda page 123) when compared with the 2015/16 actuals seem to indicate a downward trend. Is this due to staffing or other factors?

A: The table in its present form is somewhat misleading as it combines two separate reports. The new set of reports will be introduced at the next meeting of the Committee. At present only part of the data is being reported, and in addition some of the reports reflect the old targets.  However, it is true that there is a slightly downward trend.

Q: The employer error rate of 25.57% (paragraph 3.7, agenda page 108) is very high. How is it being addressed?

A: It is actually an improvement over the previous error rate of 34.21%, but it is far too high. Errors are now being dealt with on the day that the employer data are received and before they are entered into the database. With the restructuring of the Administration Team there will be dedicated staff to interface with employers and give them onsite training. Challenges are presented by the increasing number of employers in the Fund, greater staff turnover and the number of different sets of data required, e.g. for the CARE scheme and the final salary scheme.

RESOLVED to note:

1. Summary Performance Report and Performance Indicators to 30 September 2016;

2. Customer Satisfaction feedback to 30 September 2016;

3. Progress on the Data Improvement Plan;

4. Risk Register.