Agenda item

31.1     The Committee considered a report providing an update on matters relating to the Pensions Administration Team’s (PAT) activities.

31.2     The Committee’s discussion included the following key issues:

• The PAT should be congratulated for the improvements it has made to the Annual Benefit Statement (ABS) process. Excluding a few issues due to employers not responding, 99.6% of statements were issued on time.
• The Date Improvement Programme work to ensure employers and the Fund hold accurate, complementary data on scheme members; the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) Reconciliation programme; and the response to the McCloud judgement are all major projects that will be undertaken at roughly the same time. It will be important to get communications to scheme members correct and aligned across the three projects, as it may turn out, for example, that they have been overpaid through GMP reconciliation but underpaid through the McCloud judgement calculations. It will be confusing for scheme members if they receive contradictory communications about their benefits.
• Further work is being undertaken to look at how other LGPS categorise casual workers within their pension administration system. These are staff who may not work for a year, so would not receive an ABS as if they were deferred but will have accrued benefits and still be an active member.
• The i-Connect system – which will allow monthly data updates from employers to the Fund – has been purchased from Heywoods (the supplier) and is being tested by with the East Sussex County Council Finance Team’s SAP finance software. The wider use and roll-out of providing monthly data returns will be raised at the next Annual Employers Forum in November 2020.

31.3     The Committee RESOLVED to:

1) note the updates;

2) note the progress of management in implementing the agreed actions arising from the internal audit report (Appendix 5);

3) note the proposed Pension Administration structure following transition from shared service arrangements (Appendix 4); and

4) request a report at its November meeting on best practice proposals for how to treat casual workers when issuing an Annual Benefit Statement.