Issue - meetings

The item was introduced by Vicky Jenks (Pensions Admin Delivery Lead), who outlined the work that had been undertaken by the Pensions team and provided updates.

The number of pensioners using the member self-service portal had increased and 16.4 per cent of pensioners had registered. The portal was updated on a monthly basis, so users could be confident the information provided on the portal was up to date. There had been 2,500 requests to sign up to the portal after 9,500 letters were sent out to all current pensioners to inform them paper payslips would no longer be sent out from May with a view to improving admin efficiency and achieving environmental benefits, unless members opted in to continue receiving them. Vicky Jenks said it was anticipated that more queries about paper payslips would be received from June onwards, and more communication work was planned to inform pension holders of the change. It would be assumed that if a pension holder did not contact the Fund, they did not require a paper payslip. However they could continue to contact the Fund to request one. P60 forms would continue to be sent out as a paper copy however.

Councillor Shenton said it would be interesting to see the demographic breakdown of the 16.4 per cent of pensioners using MSS. Vicky Jenks said there was a desire to do age profiling of the Fund’s entire membership, to see if certain age groups either weren’t interested in engaging or could not access the portal.

Responding to a point raised by Jeff Carruthers, Vicky Jenks said pension holders who did not personally have access to a computer were allowed to use an email address of a family member so they could receive information on their account. This particularly applied in cases where a family member had registered power of attorney.

Sean McGovern asked how the Fund knew when a pension holder died. Vicky Jenks said the majority of cases were reported through a ‘tell us once’ service used by registrars that automatically informed any pension scheme or benefit provider when a death had been registered by a family member. Alternatively family members contacted the scheme directly, or the Fund would identify them through the National Fraud Initiative. Overseas pension holders had to submit life certificates to the Fund to continue receiving payments.

Regarding Key Performance Indicators, Vicky Jenks said the majority were on target and performance had been improving in the areas that had not reached their targets. More information outlining the work being done to improve the performance of KPIs that were not reaching their targets would be presented at the next meeting, which would include the numbers involved rather than just a percentage. The KPI that was performing least well related to letters detailing transfer in quotes. Vicky Jenks explained that in many cases people held pensions with more than one scheme and liaising with them all to get the requested information was a time consuming exercise.

It was noted there were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3