Issue - meetings

11.1     The Committee considered a report by the Chief Finance Officer introduced by Paul Punter, Head of Pensions Administration.

11.2     The following points were highlighted to the Committee:

1)    The performance for quarter 1 has improved slightly from quarter 4 and Key Performance Indicators now include all administration tasks.

2)    The performance figures for April 2025 and May 2025 show improvement to the figures shown within the report for quarter 1.

3)    The administration team are aware of potential spikes in workload which will be brought about by backdated pay awards meaning adjustment of annual benefit statements, work around McCloud and work following legislation updates.

4)    Turnover in staff within pension administration team has slowed the rate of recovery in terms of performance.

5)    The bulk i-Connect data file for the period June to December 2024 was successfully uploaded on 9 January 2025 with a small number of omitted members.

6)    Work is concluding in terms of combining data from McCloud with employer data to be able produce the Annual Benefit Statements and a report from Heywood was received highlighting errors which will need to be corrected before statements are finalised.

7)    Following changes to the telephony technology used by the Helpdesk, more data will be available to report in the future. The statistics will likely show a performance decrease during the period of telephony switch over due to implementation of new working practices around the new technology.

8)    The Pensions Dashboard implementation is due to commence in September 2025 and a training session for Pension Board and Pension Committee Members has been arranged for 16 September.

11.3     The Committee discussed statistics in terms of contact centre cases which could have been resolved through accessing information provided on the Pension Fund website and noted that the five most common reasons for contact centre cases are recorded and a system of answering frequently asked questions via chatbot is in development.

11.4     The Committee discussed the resource and time allocated to the McCloud project and noted that while external staff were not employed to support the project, responsibility in terms of data is shared between administration staff and Heywood.

11.5     The Committee RESOLVED to note the report.