Report to:

Pension Committee

Date of meeting:

21 November 2024

By:

Chief Finance Officer

Title:

Pension Administration - updates

Purpose:

To provide an update to the Pension Committee on matters relating to Pensions Administration activities.

 

RECOMMENDATION

The Committee is recommended to note the report.     

 

1.         Background

 

1.1       The in-house Pensions Administration Team (PAT) carries out the operational, day-to-day tasks on behalf of the members and employers of the East Sussex Pension Fund (the Fund, ESPF) and for the Administering Authority. They also lead on topical administration activities, projects and improvements that may have an impact on members of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

 

2.         Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

 

2.1       The Performance Reports for the months of July, August and September 2024 can be found at Appendices 1 to 3. The report now includes all tasks performed by the PAT and is reported directly from the Altair Insights system. A summary is included in the table below:

Month

o/s at start

Post received

Post completed

Completed in SLA

% within SLA

Outside SLA

Total o/s at end

Open tasks at end

Apr 24

2,100

1,790

1,828

1,422

77.8%

406

2,042

580

May 24

1,846

2,021

1,755

1,472

83.9%

283

2,082

556

Jun 24

1,905

1,857

1,763

1,531

86.8%

232

1,975

345

Q2, 24

 

5,668

5,346

4,425

82.8%

921

 

 

Jul 24

1,810

2,612

1,984

1,743

87.9%

241

2,404

882

Aug 24

2,215

3,024

2,326

1,991

85.6%

335

2,891

1,253

Sep 24

2,059

2,040

1,761

1,458

82.8%

303

2,904

1,252

Q3, 24

 

7,676

6,071

5,192

85.5%

879

 

 


The volume numbers of tasks received are extraordinarily high compared to the historical position and are unstainable:

 

Year

Q1 post received

Q2 post received

Q3 post received

Q4 post received

2024

4,651

5,668

7,676

 

2023

3,768

3,515

3,854

4,274

2022

2,358

2,257

2,464

2,550

 

It is difficult to give a definitive reason for the increase in tasks but the following factors are included:

 

·         The change of approach to monthly data collection allows us to receive member leaving data much quicker and we are finding that late pay (e.g. overtime/holiday pay) is resulting in recalculation.

·         Most of the i-Connect employers receive late annual pay awards and these are resulting in thousands of recalculations for all types of leavers.

·         BHCC data has be received in bulk for the last two years.

·         The move to digitalization resulted in thousands of pensioners wanting to retain paper communications.

·         The switch to the upgraded Member Self Service portal has in July resulted in thousands of support calls and password resets. 
 

The fully resourced PAT, now supplemented by a small number of robots, are working tirelessly to try to keep up with a growing backlog. The lumpy nature of some of the points above has seen large numbers of tasks added to the workloads over a short period resulting in our inability to maintain high service performance levels. 

 

To aid visibility of the work being undertaken by the PAT team Appendix 4 provides a high-level view of performance achieved (as presented to Board/Committee) over a number of years. 

2.2       The Fund aims to achieve a gold standard service provision for the Pensions Helpdesk and the results are included in Appendix 5. From April 2024 the Helpdesk has been delivered by an in-house team within PAT. Due to the transition into an in-house team the reportable information relating to service delivery has reduced. The roll out of the telephony upgrade is awaited.

 

3.         Projects update

 

3.1       McCloud remedy        

The data collection aspect for the 140 active employers is complete and the data has been uploaded into the Altair test system for final validation before being moved into the live system. The only exception is BHCC, for whom all data queries have been received and are being reviewed before imported to Altair. The data for the 37 non-active employers is being collated on a single spreadsheet for the Heywood validation tool to test in November, this has been delayed by four small employers.  The Fund has a semi-manual process to be able to calculate McCloud non-club transfer values but no solution yet for club transfers. Heywood are working closely with the users CLASS Group to prioritise the McCloud functionality, which could take up to two years to be fully implemented.    

 

3.2       Member Self Service (MSS)
MSS is a portal used by members to help keep track of their ESPF pension. Members can view their ABS, update personal information, update nomination forms, and use a range of benefit projectors. The portal was replaced in July 2024 by a version with improved functionality and increased security. Whilst all members have received a letter or email requesting them to register for the new portal the take up was lower than expected. The Fund will look to create a campaign to increase the number of registered members throughout 2025. 

 

3.3       Pensions Dashboards
Officers continue to focus on getting the data ready using a Heywood Altair Insights dashboard report to identify gaps. Heywood are our Integrated Service Provider and a project plan has been created, with a two phase approach penciled in:


Phase 1 – starting in November 2024 for 10 weeks to build and test.
Phase 2 – starting in August 2025 for 5 weeks to implement and onboard.

 

Onboarding date – all schemes must onboard by 31 October 2026 but the LGPS formal staging date is 31 October 2025. It is not yet known when the pension dashboards will go live to the public.  


3.4       Overseas Mortality checks

Officers undertake monthly mortality checks via a third party (ITM) for UK based pensioners which alerts the PAT to any unnotified deaths so that they can be processed in a timely manner to avoid overpayments. ESPF is also obliged to participate in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) mortality checks which are undertaken biannually for all pensioners.  Officers undertake a regular paper exercise for our circa 600 overseas pensioners to check their wellbeing and the most recent exercise commenced in June 2024, with about two-thirds of individuals contacted by email and the remainder by post. Overseas pensioners are required to complete a form, appropriately witnessed and returned within a few months. In late August 2024, chasers were issued to the outstanding 78 members which advised if the completed form is not returned by end of September their pensions will be suspended. In October 2024 the team suspended six pensions in payment.      

 

3.5       Annual Allowance (AA) for 2023/24
Officers identified 300+ potential cases in scope in August 2024. Given the AA limit increased from £40k to £60k fewer numbers of members were expected to be impacted. Further investigation showed 270 members could be descoped from the data collection stage. On 16 August 2024 employers were contacted relating to 2 members to collect some additional salary data by early September. All the necessary calculations were completed, and letters issued by 30 September (ahead of the statutory deadline of 6 October 2024) with ten cases over AA and only one where tax was due.

 

3.6       Postal Hub

Much of the PAT printing and postage services were switched from CFH Docmail Ltd to in-house on 1 September 2023. Officers are pleased to announce the remainder of the printing and postage (mainly pensioner payroll related – payslips and P60’s) have now migrated from 1 September 2024.     

 


4          Conclusion and reasons for recommendation.

 

4.1       The Pension Committee is asked to note the report.

 

IAN GUTSELL
Chief Finance Officer


Contact Officer:                      Paul Punter, Head of Pensions Administration
Email:                                      paul.punter@eastsussex.gov.uk