Agenda item

TPR COMPLIANCE - MEMBER ADDRESS RECTIFICATION

Minutes:

The Pensions Manager presented the report.

 

The Vice-Chair asked about the status type “frozen historic” in the table on agenda page 30, noting that these formed about a quarter of the total. The Pensions Manager explained these were historic leavers for whom there was incomplete data.  At one time they had numbered about 2,100, but targeted work to clear cases had reduced the number to 670. There were no contact details for these members at all. Many of them were due refunds, so it was hoped that their addresses could be traced so that the refunds could be paid.

 

A Member confirmed that it was not unusual for a pension fund to have such a high number of missing addresses for deferred members. She asked if there was any information about how successful the tracing exercise would be. The Pensions Manager replied that he did not have this to hand at the moment, though he was optimistic that a high proportion of the missing members would be traced. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions said that missing members tended to contact the Fund when they were about to retire and wanted to claim their pensions. He thought this was a pragmatic way of handling the problem of missing addresses. However, many of the deferred members were still quite young, so their pension was not uppermost in their minds. He did wonder how much success there would be in tracing missing members and to what extent contact with them would be maintained in future, given that there were some 20,000 deferred members. When the information was provided to the Fund by the tracing agencies, it would be examined to see how many potential best matches there were, and then efforts would be made to try to get them accustomed to communicating with the Fund electronically. He thought the tracing exercise was a bit of a stab in the dark, but he hoped there would be a significant success rate.

 

A Member asked what “undecided leavers” were. The Pensions Manager explained that when members left one of the Fund’s employers with no LGPS entitlement, under current legislation they now had five years to decide whether they wanted a refund of their contributions or a transfer out. It was now year 4 since the legislation had come into force and the “undecided leavers” were those who had not informed the Fund of which option they wished to take. After 5 years refunds have to be paid, and a suspense account for these refunds will have to be set up.

 

A Member said that in the case of pensioners and dependants, a pension was being paid to them, so, on the face of it, there would be seem to be a channel by which they could be contacted. The Pensions Manager explained that these were cases where the payment of pensions had actually been suspended because of a lack of response from the payee. These cases were subject to regularly mortality screening.

 

A Member asked whether other LGPS schemes had similar levels of missing addresses. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions said that the Avon Fund was totally transparent in its reporting, whereas he got the feeling when he read committee papers of other funds that they tended to report the workable caseload rather than the complete caseload, and therefore comparisons tended to be misleading.

 

A Member asked whether the £25,000 cost of the project would be borne by the Fund, rather than the employers who not supplied complete data. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions replied that it would be borne by the Fund; the Administration Strategy gave the Fund the power to charge employers for additional administration work they caused, but this was not being considered at present.

 

A Member noted that the aim was to complete the first stages of the project by 31st March; as it was now the 23rd March, the project had presumably already commenced. The Pensions Manager confirmed that this was the case. 

 

A Member asked whether the lack of contact details was a key driver of the deteriorating percentage of workable cases. The Head of Business, Finance and Pensions said that it was not; in general cases were not progressing because a decision was awaited from the scheme member.

 

RESOLVED to approve the member address rectification proposal.

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