Agenda item

The Pensions Manager presented the report.

During the reporting period the number of employers in the Fund had increased by 65, the majority of these arising from Academy conversions and the associated Admitted Bodies for outsourced catering and cleaning contracts. There were now 350 employers in the Fund. Each conversion required significant administration work and communication between the Fund and the employer. A number of schools had also changed their payroll provider. A further 69 employers were awaiting admission to the Fund. The Chair noted that about 65 new employers were joining the Fund per quarter. Each one imposed the same administrative burden on the Fund, regardless of their size; this highlighted the pressure on the resources of the Administration team. Responding to a question from a Member, the Pensions Manager said this rate of increase was likely to continue for some time as Academy conversion ran its course, and he thought it likely that the number of employers would reach 500.

The Pensions Manager said that though Appendix 2 demonstrated an overall improvement in performance against SLA targets during the quarter, however the majority of KPIs remained below target. Performance was better against statutory targets, and reports were being developed to make this information available to the Board. Work continued to identify backlogs. The project to improve the early leavers process had been completed, and plans were in place to address the backlog of Intra fund transfers and Aggregation cases, which numbered about 3,000, and formed the majority of the total backlog. The backlog had impacted considerably on overall performance. Another fund in the southwest of similar size to Avon with a similar number of Aggregation cases was quoted £170,000 by an external agency to clear their backlog.

Turning to the TPR Improvement Plan, the Pensions Manager said that Administration had developed reports to assess compliance in respect of common and scheme-specific data by membership status and data type, as shown in Appendix 4. For active members, employers are being provided with a quarterly exception report. Overall, errors had reduced in the latest quarter. Outstanding errors for B&NES were now down to single figures. B&NES had had to suspend the use of IConnect for some time, because of a change in payroll software, but it was now restored, which should eliminate the problem of missing data.

The Pensions Manager said that he had looked at other funds’ performance reports and thought that Avon was now producing the most detailed reports with the most data. The Chair agreed that the Fund now had a much better grip on performance issues. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions said there were no templates for reporting by funds; it took a great deal of work to prepare these reports for the Board. The Chair suggested that funds ought to make a joint approach to Heywood to make the report formats developed by Avon a standard part of their software.

The Chair requested a list of “repeat offender” late payers who had made late payments in each of the three years since the Board was established to be presented to the next meeting of the Board. If there was no good reason for their persistent late paying, consideration should be given to reporting them to TPR.

The Chair asked the reason for the difference in the number of TPR errors when reported by members (7241) and by type (7759). The Pensions Manager replied that this might be because the records of some members contained more than one error.

The Chair suggested it would be useful if Board Members and Fund staff attended the CIPFA training on calculating TPR errors. It did not appear that funds were using a common method of calculating errors. It would be useful if they did, to provide comparative information.

The Board was pleased to note that the Fund’s positive direction of travel in performance. They supported the Fund being given the resources needed to do its job.

RESOLVED to note:

1. Membership data, Employer Performance and Avon Pension Fund performance for the 3 months to 31 December 2017.

2. Progress and reviews of the TPR Data Improvement Plan.

3. That new reporting for the Board was under development.