Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to inform the Pensions Committee of the performance for Fund Administration for the period up to 31^st December 2020 and actions undertaken following the Coronavirus outbreak and UK lockdown on 23^rd March 2020.

The Pensions Manager introduced this report to the Committee and highlighted the following areas from within it.

As per TPR guidance the Fund has focussed on critical member processes including those related to the payment of retirement and death benefits.

Appendix 2 (Annex 1 & 2) and Appendix 2a provide details of APF performance up to the end of the quarter for all KPI’s measured against both SLA and statutory legal deadlines. KPI’s continue to be monitored and reported for review on a bi-weekly basis.

Appendix 2 (Annex 3) reflects the position at the end of December with an overall total of 3,294 cases outstanding of which 1,828 (55%) are workable. This represents a minor decrease in outstanding workable cases over the previous period.

There has been a reduction in recorded common data errors across most membership categories, with an improved overall data score of 95.38% for the quarter ending December 2020. Improvements in the data score can be partly attributed to the missing CARE project that has been underway for the last 6 months which is now seeing positive results from employers and progress continues to be made with the address tracing project.

The project undertaken to trace and correct missing member addresses is continuing. Of the 6,700 cases originally identified 4,740 positive matches have been confirmed by the tracing agency of which 32% have individually been verified as correct. Further work is ongoing to complete the project members and to address those cases as yet unprocessed. A detailed report on progress will be presented at the next committee meeting.

Transfers In – Due to working from home and lockdown restrictions with access to the office these cases were initially not a priority and our main focus was on paying benefits, transfer in cases are currently delayed at print stage causing a backlog.

The administration recruitment project is still ongoing and currently in phase 2 of 3. The induction and training of newly appointed members of staff via the new training officer program is in place and working well. A project lead has now been appointed for the McCloud data collection project, this was an internal appointment and backfilling is currently underway.

Shaun Stephenson-McGall commented that he welcomed the proposed report to the next Committee regarding missing member addresses.

The Committee RESOLVED to note the Fund and Employer performance for the three months to 31st December 2020.