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Report to: |
Pension Board |
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Date of meeting: |
4 November 2025 |
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By: |
Chief Finance Officer |
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Title: |
Pension Administration - updates |
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Purpose: |
To provide an update to the Pension Board on matters relating to Pensions Administration activities.
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RECOMMENDATION: The Pension Board is recommended
to note the updates and make any comments for feedback to the
Pension Committee. |
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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 2025 can be found at Appendices 1 to
3. Each report includes all tasks performed by the PAT and is
reported directly from the Altair Insights system. A summary is
included in the table below:
*o/s = outstanding **SLA = Service Level Agreement
2.3
The Fund aims to achieve a gold standard service provision for the
Pensions Helpdesk and the results for July to September 2025 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 East Sussex County Council (ESCC) telephony upgrade was
completed mid-May 2025. As a result, the Helpdesk was expecting
access to call centre technology but that has yet to be installed.
It is anticipated that call centre technology will be installed
soon as an IT&D project manager has now been assigned to this
task, so the PAT will again review the format and type of
Management Information data available.
3.
Pension Administration Staffing Update
3.1 There has been one resignation on the pension helpdesk since the last meeting and the Operator leaving at the end of October 2025. A new Project Officer started on 20 October 2025. The PAT is carrying forward 2 vacancies including a temporary vacancy due to maternity leave.
4. Projects update
McCloud remedy
4.1 Now the Annual Benefit Statements have been issued; the PAT can concentrate on finalising the review of the remaining errors and issue outstanding statements by the end of this year. In 2026 officers will begin work on the non-active member recalculations where the McCloud underpin applied, ahead of the 31 August 2026 deadline.
Pension Dashboards
4.2
A training session for Pension Board and Pension Committee members
on the Pension Dashboards took place on 16 September 2025.
4.3 Officers are looking to
create a new Prudential Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC)
data screen on Altair to hold the annual data that can be submitted
to the Integrated Service Provider (ISP) via a single source. A
Heywood contract variation for the single
source AVC solution for the Pension Dashboard Programme was
completed on 14 October 2025.
4.4
Onboarding was completed on 24 September 2025 ahead of the deadline
of 31 October 2025, but it is not yet known when the pension
dashboards will go live to the public. The ESPF website was updated
to let employers and members know:
Connection to Pension Dashboard | East Sussex Pension
Fund.
Annual Allowance (AA) for
2024/25
4.5
Officers identified 300+ potential cases in scope in August 2025.
Given the AA limit increased from £40k to £60k in the
previous year, fewer members were expected to be impacted. Further
investigation showed 270 members could be descoped from the data
collection stage. Some additional salary data will be required from
a few employers for a small number of members in early September.
All the necessary calculations and letters will be issued in late
September 2025 (8 members exceeded the allowance and 3 were
required to pay additional tax) before the statutory deadline 6
October 2025.
Additional Voluntary
Contributions implementation of approved
changes
4.6 At the 27 February 2025
Pension Committee meeting, the following decisions were
made:
- Change the default investment fund for new members from “With Profits” to the Lifestyle approach “Dynamic Growth Targeting Cash”.
- Retain the “With Profits” fund as the default for existing investors including their future contributions. The fund will also remain a self-select option for new members.
- Hard Close funds where no assets remain
- “Fixed Interest” fund - and consider closing the “Index-Linked” fund that had one deferred member.
- Allow soft Close funds to be used by existing investors.
- Introduce a Sharia compliant equity option.
-
not to look for a
self-select Bond fund.
4.7 These decisions were
implemented by the Chief Finance Officer and Officers after
co-ordination with Barnett Waddingham (BW) and the Prudential
(Pru). Emails or letters were issued to all AVC policy holders on 2
October 2025 announcing the effective date of the changes on 31
October 2025.
Digital Assistant
(chatbot)
4.8
The Digital Assistant is a Chatbot designed to sit on the ESPF
website and answer frequently asked questions (FAQ). Officers are
working with an external provider (ICS.AI) who created a draft set
of 298 questions and answers. A comprehensive review of the FAQ and
prescribed answers have been finalised in June 2025, and 260
questions remain. The next phase is the user acceptance testing
(UAT) and there are 3 workstreams:
- Very detailed core testing of 22 questions completed in September 2025 and results are being assessed.
- Exploratory testing where much less prescribed commencing in October 2025.
- Survey type testing which will include some Board members in November 2025.
5
Conclusion and reasons for
recommendation
5.1
The Pension Board is recommended to note the report and make any
comments for feedback to the Pension Committee.
IAN GUTSELL
Chief Finance Officer
Contact Officer:
Paul Punter, Head of Pensions Administration
Email:
paul.punter@eastsussex.gov.uk