Agenda item

This report updates the Pensions Board on various pensions administration matters as part of its remit to oversee the administration of the Brent Pension Fund.

This report updated the Pensions Board on various pensions administration matters as part of its remit to oversee the administration of the Brent Pension Fund and reviewed the performance of LPP. Mr Sawan Shah (Senior Finance Analyst) introduced the report and answered Members’ questions.  He reported on the Pensions administration team’s monthly meetings with LPP that monitored the performance of the contract looking at both the individual month and trends across months. 

Members heard that the number of cases completed were on time in September 2020 at 99.5% which was above the target of 98%.  He clarified that whilst most of the new cases related to death these were not necessarily related to Covid-19. Helpdesk call performance that measured the average wait time and calls answered was 90% the target time of 2 minutes.  He then referenced the service improvements delivered; the launch of a bereavement survey, an in-house bulk email solution, mortality tracing and address screening launched through Target. Scheduled updates included launch of single website for all Members and Employers which was due in November 2020, members surveys to launch for estimates and transfers and a ‘Livechat’ feature to be available on the new website.

In concluding his review, Mr Shah stated that Brent and LPP were taking action to ensure that these cases are resolved swiftly however the complex nature of some cases meant that this was not always possible. In addition, following the completion of each case, a process was undertaken to ensure any lessons learned were reviewed and consequently, if necessary, processes and procedures updated.

Mr Ravinder Jassar (Head of Finance) introduced the remaining salient aspects of the report: Annual Benefit Statements (ABS), Data Cleansing and GAD Valuation.  The Head of Finance informed the Board that ABS was issued online to all members identified on year-end returns from employers by the deadline of 31 August 2020. Any member who had opted out of electronic communications received a printed copy of their ABS through the post.   The Board heard that the Fund was carrying out a focussed exercise with a dedicated resource to clear historical unprocessed leavers. Due to this issue, it had not been possible to issue an ABS to these members. The project, completion by 31st March 2021, would resolve these records and an ABS would be made available to these members as soon as possible. 

In respect of year-end returns, he stated that some employers missed the April deadline but by the September, they had all submitted their returns. Mr Jassar continued that the Pensions Administration Strategy allowed the scheme manager to take actions against employers that failed to comply with their statutory and legal obligations to the Pension Fund. These actions would be considered should employers not respond to LPP’s requests for information in a timely manner. The scheme manager would continue to work closely with LPP and employers to resolve the outstanding queries as soon possible, treating the overall exercise as a high priority.

On data cleansing, the Head of Finance informed the Board that notwithstanding the first phase of the project commissioned to cleanse and fix errors identified in member data, responses received were not sufficient to process the leaver cases.  As a result, the Fund has commissioned a separate project to review and resolve these outstanding leaver queries. This will ensure that additional dedicated resources can be put in place until 31st March 2021 in order to ensure that this issue can be resolved as quickly as possible. In the absence of such a dedicated project, it is likely that these cases will remain un-solved into 2021/22 and continue to impact Brent’s data scores.  He then set out the flip side of not carrying out the project which included but not limited to the following:

·         Errors remaining on records at the next valuation therefore requiring assumptions to be made.

·         A material impact on the Fund’s TPR data score, in particular the conditional score which records scheme specific data.

·         The GAD (Government Actuary Department) require good quality data to be submitted for their analysis of LGPS funds.

With no further issues raised and having established that all members had followed the discussions, the Chair thanked all speakers for their contributions.  In welcoming the updates Members RESOLVED:

To note the overall report.