Agenda item

The Pensions Manager presented the report. He drew attention to Appendix 2, asking the Board to note the overall improvement in the number of cases completed within five days of SLA targets over the last quarter.

A Member acknowledged the improvement, but the majority of SLA targets were in red and had not been met. He suggested that the addition of some explanation and narrative would make the report more intelligible to outsiders. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions suggested the report should indicate that all statutory standards had been achieved. The Chair responded that the evidence of that should be provided in future compliance reports. Is the Fund complying with the public service pension scheme record keeping and disclosure regulations? Evidence should be provided in future reports.

The Chair asked the meaning of ‘undecided’ in Annex 4. The Pensions Manager explained that these were people who had left the Fund, and had not decided whether they wanted a refund of their accrued pension benefits, or to leave them in the Fund, or to transfer to them to another fund.

The Chair said that he was very concerned by the number of scheme members for whom correct addresses were not held. There were over 6,000 of these, and the number had been at this level for some time. There was a regulatory requirement that the administering authority should have this information as common data. He suggested that Pensions Administration should prioritise the acquisition of this information. The Employment Services Manager responded that the number had in fact gone up in the latest period though as much resource as possible was put into acquiring this information. The Chair responded that the allocation of administrative resources was not a matter for the Board. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions suggested that responsibility should be on the individual to provide this information.  The fact is that the scheme manager has an overriding legal responsibility to hold the common data and TPR has zero tolerance for missing scheme member common data and this needed to be addressed with greater priority. By way of example, an adjacent fund has only 0.3% of missing addresses for deferred members, while APF has a very high proportion of 12%.

The Communications and Public Relations Manager drew attention to the proposal for improving member and employer feedback surveys given in Appendix 6A. The Board welcomed the proposal. The Chair said that the Board would be particularly interested in the response levels to the various feedback opportunities. It should also be borne in mind that scheme members who did not respond were equally important.

The Chair expressed his thanks for the high level of granularity in the reports, which considerably helped the Board to perform its functions.

RESOLVED:

1.  To note membership data, Employer Performance and Avon Pension Fund Performance for the 3 months to 30 September 2017.

2.  Future compliance reports should present administration performance data against both statutory timescales and SLA timesclaes.

3.  To note progress and reviews of the TPR Data Improvement Plan and to recommend that the Administering Authority be recommended to prioritise resources to rectify the gaps in missing scheme member data.