Report attached.

Contact: Debbie Sharp (01743) 252192

The Board received the report of the Pensions Administration Manager – copy attached to the signed Minutes – which provided Members with the latest administration and regulatory updates affecting the Local Government Pensions Scheme.

The Pensions Administration Manager explained that the latest administration and regulatory updates had been presented to the Pensions Committee at its meeting on 24 June 2022 but that she had included the additional items that had come through since in this report.

The Pensions Administration Manager referred to the Scheme Advisory Board Annual report that had recently been published for 2021.  She drew attention to some of the statistics including the growth in fund membership, the increase in the AUM for all LGPS Funds and how the number of LPPS employers had increased.  Everything therefore reflected what was happening in Shropshire.  At the moment it seemed to be running along the lines of the national picture.

She drew attention to the PLSA research project that had recently been published. Although it did not suggest any answers, it actually pulled together all of the issues and challenges across the LGPS.

Referring to the Administration and Regulatory update report that was considered by the Pensions Committee at its last meeting, a query was raised as to the performance of the team.  In particular, paragraph 7.2 which referred to the year-end member data submitted to the fund and paragraph 7.3 which referred to data cleansing.  It was queried whether there was anything outstanding on that data.

In response, the Pensions Administration Manager reported that currently they had had all of the year end submissions of the data from all of the employers however there were still a couple of employers that had not submitted their reconciliation reports.  She explained that under the legislation they needed to have had everything by the end of June.  She reported that they were now in a position where they could chase the employers for those outstanding records because they were in contravention of the rules.  She went on to explain that the data was still being cleansed and that all employers were being chased for the information required for the valuation.  There were currently 700 unprocessed leavers, of which 70 needed to be chased for their leavers documentation in order to have a deferred benefit calculation.

She explained that the council had a good working relationship with its employers and that all data was usually robust although they did need to chase a few and these were monitored for their breaches and chased as necessary.

In response to a query, the Pensions Administration Manager explained that it was resolvable as far as benefits for the individual were concerned as they would get that information from the employers and if it was not resolvable by the following week when the data needed to be sent to the Actuary, this may have an impact on the employers’ contribution rate, and this had been communicated to all employers to ensure they were aware and could put additional resources into that area.

Turning to paragraph 7.5 of the Committee report, a query was raised in relation to the annual pension increase, the issues that arose during this year’s exercise and the lessons that were learnt from it.  In response, the Pensions Administration Manager explained that the lessons learnt were more about the process and whether it was as robust as it should be, whether it ensured that any changes to the system were picked up etc. 

She explained that the pensions increase had been affected by the pension reconciliation and rectification exercise that had been undertaken the previous year and there had been some changes in the software which hadn’t been picked up on to ensure that the processes on the system were calculated in the way they should be.  This was picked up when the increase was run through a test system first however, this should have already been known about.  This issue had been addressed by the appointment of a project manager within the team so it would be managed by one person engaging with all three teams across the whole of the Pensions Administration team.

      Member noted the contents of the report.