Agenda item

The purpose of this report is to present the Fund’s performance for the three months to 31^st March 2022 against its key performance indicators (KPI’s) in relation to the administration of pension benefits.

The Employer Services Manager introduced this report to the Board and highlighted the following areas.

Workload & Performance

With Increasing volumes of work the Fund continues to operate below its desired target of >90% for most case types and the case-by-case breakdown demonstrates an overall general maintenance from the previous quarter. Generally, however, KPI benchmarking performance has declined over the past year.

A contributory factor relating to underperformance can be associated with the inclusion of the current backlog project and the processing of historic workload cases impacting KPI’s.

The Backlog project has exceeded the original six-months allocated timeframe. The final cases are more complex requiring Senior Pensions Officer’s sign off and cases waiting for outstanding information that will be dealt with outside the backlog project.

McCloud Judgement

The Fund continues to work on collating/analysing data from employers in relation to implementing the remedy.

Resource Recruitment & Training

Recruitment and retention remain a key factor impacting business operations. Employer Services currently have 4 FTE vacancies and member services teams have 3 FTE vacancies in addition the Technical & Compliance post remaining unfilled. The administration is also carrying three maternity absences across the service at this time.

The Fund is currently engaging with a specialist recruitment agency to secure 4 technical posts on a temporary basis pending ongoing recruitment campaigns.

Recruitment continues to backfill vacant posts, maternity cover and secondment to projects and overstaffing is being considered at Assistant Pensions Officer level to mitigate the impact of further staff movement.

To mitigate operational workload some project work has already been outsourced. In particular; GMP reconciliation project and the address tracing project. Mercer consultants continue to provide Technical & Compliance advice and guidance.

Alison Wyatt asked what can be done in terms of McCloud and the data that is still outstanding from 2 of the main 4 Unitary Authorities.

The Employer Services Manager replied that in particular, one of the UA’s does not yet have a workable solution for their data. She added that they have around 5,000 active members and have setup an internal project to attempt to complete this work by the deadline of 31^st August 2022.

Steve Harman said that he believed that the issue should be escalated to the highest level within that Authority as it was putting the Fund in a difficult position.

The Employer Services Manager replied that Senior HR Officers and Financial Directors have been advised and they will look to go further if required.

The Chair said that the Board would support officers in their pursuit of this information.

The Employer Services Manager said that this matter would not affect the Annual Benefit Statements. She added that they were due to meet with that Authority within the next two weeks.

Steve Harman commented that he acknowledged that the Fund was not where it wanted to be in terms of performance, but said that this was in no way a criticism of officers who were continuing to work hard under pressure.

The Employer Services Manager replied that she believed that the Digital Strategy would ease a number of these issues. She added that the amount of monthly data received by the Fund is vast.

Alison Wyatt asked if it was known why there had been such an increase in cases recently.

The Employer Services Manager replied that membership was increasing slowly, but that it had been evidenced that there had been a 50% increase in leavers over the past two years.

The Pensions Manager added that there had also been a recent explosion of employers and that more short-term contracts were in effect, especially since the pandemic.

Helen Ball asked that with such a wide range of employers had any consideration been given to applying any additional charges so that this could be added to the budget of the Pension Fund.

The Pensions Manager replied that the long term aim of the admin strategy was to offer a consultancy service to employers where support from the Fund was needed and that this would be chargeable.

He advised the Board that they were seeking to procure a new AVC provider having served notice with current provider Aviva. He added that discussions are ongoing with Hymans Robertson regarding support in procuring a new provider.

He said that officers recognise that performance figures are not where the Fund would want to be with regard to KPIs and that APF do participate in national benchmarking with CIPFA. He added though that many schemes were not, with less than 20%, so access to comparable data was not easy.

Steve Harman said that he was an advocate of benchmarking and offered the support of the Corporate Team to the Fund to help where possible.

The Chair suggested using information that is available from submission of the SF3 form by Local Authorities for cost comparison and the Fund Annual Reports (all held on the SAB website) for service delivery KPI comparison.

The Pensions Manager said that they could use SF3 to compare costs data and would also carry on with CIPFA in terms of performance.

The Board RESOLVED to note the Fund performance for the three months to 31st March 2022.