Agenda item

To be presented by Sam Price, Assistant Pensions Administration Manager, Buckinghamshire Council.

S Price, Assistant Pensions Administration Manager, Buckinghamshire Council, referred the report circulated with the agenda.

The following points were highlighted:

• Incoming communications were at a consistent level to previous quarters. There had been less post received and emails from individuals to the pensions general inbox had reduced. The majority of scheme members communicated through My Pension Online and employers were using i-Connect to upload employee documentation.
• The pensions inbox was monitored daily with 100% of queries dealt with on the same day. Queries were replied to directly by email or the necessary work flow was raised.
• The target average phone queue time was 40 seconds however, the team performed better than this target with averaged queue time of 18 seconds. In June it was noted the average time was 13 seconds. The team had four Member Liaison Officers to answer calls who were commended for their prompt responses.
• The priority target relating to work load was 95% of tasks completed within relevant turnaround times. The team achieved 97.2% this quarter with payments of benefits prioritised.
• The four benefit administration priority areas included retirements, deaths, AVC’s at retirement and refunds. Three of the priority areas achieved 98% of tasks completed in the target turnaround time. The AVC’s at retirement achieved 91% which was due to having to chase information from the AVC provider.
• The table showing other areas of benefit administration highlighted the team had on average dealt with 3300 new cases per month with no areas for concern or backlog of outstanding queries.
• Aggregation had a 72% achievement rate. It was noted the team were working to improve turnaround times. These cases were high volume and a lower priority for the team.
• It was noted the table showing open cases was for June 2022 not February 2022. There were 2829 open cases with 29% overdue. Cases were reviewed on a monthly basis with a notable reduction since April with 61% open cases.
• It was highlighted the overdue cases for Leavers was fairly high due to difficulties in receiving information from scheme employers. The team had reviewed these cases in detail assessing the information held and wrote to scheme members if required.  
• Cases which were overdue for longer than three months were reviewed by the Senior Pensions Officer monthly. 78% of overdue cases were waiting for external partners to respond. 22% of overdue cases were either being dealt with by the team or were ready for checking.

It was highlighted discussions were ongoing with Aquila Heywood, the pensions administration software provider, to develop a new report to produce more in-depth data on overdue cases by employer. This data would be provided as a confidential appendix of the agenda in the future.

In response to a query it was confirmed when a user raises a question via My Pension Online this was automatically sent to the Pensions inbox for the necessary workflow to be created.  

There was a request for future reports to include the relevant time periods above tables of case statistics and headers.

A member of the Board highlighted the issue of pension scams and scam awareness when dealing with account queries from scheme members. It was advised there was updated guidance for administrators on pension scams. There was a lengthy process of verifying and checking the identity of scheme members and financial advisor’s credentials before discussing or paying funds.

It was explained that aggregation included an employee who had more than one period of membership in the Local Government Pension Scheme. There was in-house aggregation when an employee commences employment at another employer with the same pension fund. The employees’ period of membership could be joined together unless specified and there were inter-fund transfers with other LGPS funds.

RESOLVED Members of the Board NOTED the update.