Issue - meetings

25.1     The Committee considered a report introduced by Paul Punter who drew the Committee’s attention to the following points:

KPIs:

1)    The performance of the Pensions Administration team has remained consistently high, just under 95%

2)    Volume of post completed in line with previous quarter.

3)    June: some red and amber items due to increased work load including the backlog of data from one of the larger employers and a need to focus resources towards statutory projects; this underperformance of KPI’s will continue through to the next quarter

4)    Key pieces of work are prioritised to ensure no breaches will be incurred although the additional work created by B&H will be a challenge for the team.

Helpdesk:

5)    The ESPF will bring the helpdesk in house from April 2024, relevant staff to be TUPED and work underway, there are no concerns with performance at this time

6)    Details for the transition are still being planned however the software should be the same but this will be confirmed ahead of testing and officers advised this work will be managed through a wider project to ensure the Fund can operate effectively once services are inhouse.

Staffing:

7)    Much more settled with key vacancies filled and final interviews being conducted at the moment.

Projects:

8)    99.76% of Annual benefit statements were produced for deferred members. 95.9% of Annual Benefit Statements were produced for active Fund members which is considered a real achievement in the context of the volume of B&H data issues and the transition to i-Connect. 125 of the 141 employers’ data was collected through i-Connect. There has been a technical breach as did not achieve 100% of ABS returns. Officers, Pension Board and Committee will need to consider if the failure to provide 100% of the Annual Benefits Statement is a material breach of legislation that would require a report to the Pensions Regulator to be made.

9)    Process reviews are going well, will expect to finish in December. The Printing and postage service has gone live for the administration team but not for the payroll activities.

25.2     The Committee RESOLVED to note the updates.