Agenda item

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 no red breaches, and the issues relating to an Academy that had been causing a red breach previously in the year had now been resolved. Vicky Jenks said all employers in the scheme had now signed up to iConnect, which had helped reduce the number of breaches. Responding to a question from Councillor Shenton, Vicky Jenks said employers that did not engage with the Fund on key issues would have breaches escalated more quickly to a red breach, and the employer would be warned of this. A breach would usually be escalated to red after four months where there was engagement but no sign of a resolution. There were however also examples where an employer would be shown some leniency if they had not resolved their issue after three months, but had demonstrated they were actively trying to take steps to solve it and resolution was anticipated in the near future. In the example of the parish council referenced in the main report, this was because of staff capacity and resource issues that had delayed the submission of data.

The valuation had been completed and the Funding Strategy Statement formally signed off. There were outstanding queries on three employers regarding their rates and membership of the Fund.

There were no outstanding IDRP cases. Three complaints had been received, which had all received official responses and there had been no follow up required to any of them.

The pensions dashboard scheme had been delayed, and new timescales were expected to be released before the summer.

Jeff Carruthers noted there had been a low take-up regarding shared cost additional voluntary contributions (AVC). Vicky Jenks said this was likely to be due to a lack of awareness by members for options to top up their pensions, and the additional benefits they gave to employers. Andy Felton (Assistant Director, Finance) observed that general affordability for some people could be a natural barrier to people choosing not to access an AVC arrangement.