Issue - meetings

41.1     The Committee considered a report providing an update on the progress of the GMP exercise.

41.2     The Committee RESOLVED to:

1) note the report;

2) agree that a mini-tender exercise is conducted to identify an operator to conduct the next stage of the GMP reconciliation exercise; and

3) agree to approve delegated responsibility to the Chief Finance Officer in consultation with the Chair for the purposes of completing the mini-tender

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39.1.      The Board considered a report providing an update on the progress of the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) Reconciliation Exercise.

39.2.      JB explained that ITM has completed its project and identified 11,760 unreconciled deferred and pension aged ESPF members requiring further review. The next stage is to carry out a mini tender for a company to assess these 11,760 members and ITM have been asked to provide a cost for this exercise.

39.3.      The Chair expressed concern that 11,760 was a high figure. JB said that a lot of the cases will be able to be resolved in bulk as they will relate to discrepancies between ESPF and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) records where people left their jobs and HMRC did not track their movement. The figure of 1,875 pensioners of post GMP age is expected to come down on review.

39.4.      The Chair observed that it was difficult to get a feel for the benefits of this exercise for individual scheme members and the cost reconciliation will have on the ESPF.

39.5.      The Chair asked whether the figure of 9,586 cases awaiting data from HMRC along with 88 other funds requesting similar information would make it very unlikely that HMRC will have cleared the backlog before its deadline of 31 December 2018. JB said that HMRC has committed more resources to dealing with the volume of data requests.

39.6.      The Board RESOLVED to note the report.