Issue - meetings

Pension administration /communications update

Meeting: 28/11/2019 - Clwyd Pension Fund Committee (Item 94)

94 Administration and Communications Update pdf icon PDF 134 KB

To provide Committee Members with an update and recommendations on administration and communication matters for the Clwyd Pension Fund.

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED:

(a)  The Committee considered the update and provide any comments.

(b)  The Committee noted the requirement to potentially extend the timescales in relation to the survivor benefits implementation (A6) as outlined in paragraph 1.01.

(c)  That the Committee approved the use of the urgency delegation procedure to take forward items A3 (Under/overpayment Policy) and A8 (GMP reconciliation).

 

Minutes:

                      Mrs Williams gave a brief update on the administration and communication related items from the latest quarter. The recommendations focus on the 2019/20 Business Plan. Mrs Williams mentioned that timescales may slip on the implementation of the survivor benefit changes because the administration team need to go back all members in the Fund to determine if members had any relationship and therefore any surviving benefits in the Fund.

                      The GMP reconciliation exercise was outsourced to Equiniti and is now entering its final stage. The exercise involved confirming that HMRC GMP records match the Fund’s. There have been challenges faced in this exercise and this will include the need to repay underpayments and consider reclaiming overpayments for some pensioners and dependant members, as well as then increasing or reducing pensions going forward. Due to the tight timescales, the Committee were being asked to allow these decisions to be made using the urgency delegations, and then an update would be brought to the February Committee meeting.

                      Mr Hibbert queried the plan on reclaiming any overpayments the Fund had made to pensioners as a result of an incorrect GMP. Mrs McWilliam suggested that it is highly likely that the decisions will be that the Fund will not seek to reclaim for any overpayments. This approach has been recommended by the LGA following a suggestion from Government.  It was also confirmed that the DWP would not be refunding any overpayments due to incorrect data.

                      Mrs Williams said the Fund are hoping to implement everything by the February Committee so that the Fund does not go through another pension increase period i.e. April 2020.

                      On page 170, Councillor Bateman asked how the recruitment process was progressing. Mrs Williams said that there was a number of internal interviews and two candidates were successful. Both had strong interviews therefore, the position will be shared between both candidates. One has a post in the retirement team working part-time, and one will work in the aggregation team part-time. The succession planning that the Fund has requires more lead roles, so Mrs Williams believed that this will work extremely well.

                      Mrs Williams also added cybercrime as a new risk, the Fund will be requesting more information from Flintshire on this.

RESOLVED:

(a)  The Committee considered the update and provide any comments.

(b)  The Committee noted the requirement to potentially extend the timescales in relation to the survivor benefits implementation (A6) as outlined in paragraph 1.01.

(c)  That the Committee approved the use of the urgency delegation procedure to take forward items A3 (Under/overpayment Policy) and A8 (GMP reconciliation).