Agenda item

10.1    The Pension Project and Governance Lead, introduced the report

          outlining the Statutory Projects =

10.1.1           The Committee were informed of the current position of the Guaranteed Minimum Pension and that there was a risk of not completing the project by April 2023, when there are the Pensions Increase. This risk has developed since the last Pension Fund Committee meeting and Mercers have informed the Pension Project and Governance Lead that they believe they are currently on track to meet their deadline. With respect to project costs, the Committee was asked to approve a purchase order of £30,000, with a £24,000 and a £6,000 split for Hampshire Pension Services to support the project. The £24,000 figure is based on a maximum of 20 days for Intellica / Civica to prepare and upload the rectified data and the £6,000 figure (based on three weeks of resource) would be used for Hampshire’s team supporting adjustments and the upload. All costs will be carefully monitored.

10.1.2           The Committee was informed of the McCloud judgement and that COWPF LGPS will recalculate the benefits for eligible members for the remedy period of 1^st April 2014 to 31^st March 2022.

10.1.2.1                   The Committee were informed of Workstream 1 – COWPF Employer Data Collection and that for the remedy period of 1^stApril 2014 to 31^st March 2021, the second round of chasing for outstanding returns had been completed. Hampshire Pension Services have received 23 of 37 completed service/break data sets from Westminster employers in October. This represents 19.79% of the membership populate who are likely to require McCloud remedy.

                                The Committee was also informed that for the period 1^st April 2021 to 31^st March 2022 there were no additional submissions of data in October which remains at 21 of 39 completed service/data sets from Westminster employers. This represents 15.33% of the membership who are likely to require McCloud remedy.

10.1.2.2                   The Committee was informed of the WCC Data Collection, led by the Pensions Project & Governance lead with the WCC Payroll Team. The Pensions Project & Governance lead explained that in this workstream, they were looking at collecting McCloud data for the three legacy payroll systems and current progress was as follows:

                                - IBC Data has been collected, collated, and shared with Hampshire Pension Services as of June 2022.

                                - BT Agresso legacy data collection is expected to be completed by the Pensions Officer in December 2022

                                - CIPHR legacy data is a manual collection and progressing with purpose. Weekly updates on progress are taking place and a desired completion date is currently January 2023.

                                Further to this, the automated reporting on CIPHR data collection was explained to the Committee covering the first iteration of the new PowerBI interface and the Oracle Legacy Data Collection.

10.1.2.3                   There was no update from the Pensions Project & Governance lead on Workstream 3, the LGPS Benefits Recalculation Exercise as Phase 2 has not yet launched.

10.1.3 The Committee was informed that the Pensions Dashboard, as per the programme initiated by The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), will become a priority project in the next financial year. There was a report presented to officers and the key takeaways were:

           -  At present, only active and deferred member benefits were in scope

           -  The legislation sets out significant roles for The Pensions Regulator who will regulate the compliance of public-sector pension providers and schemes in providing data to individuals via their chosen dashboard

           - Pension benefit information must be made available via the pension dashboard by 1^st April 2025 and cover both benefit options, to reflect McCloud remedy.

           -  Hampshire Pension Services have chosen to use an integrated service provider, Civica, who will be responsible for connecting to the dashboard ecosystem, providing the ‘view’ and ‘find’ information, managing member matching and providing governance and monitoring tools. For this, a request of £710.95 was asked of the Committee to be agreed to for indicative costs.

10.1.4 The Committee were also informed that an indication of costs for engaging with the Pensions Dashboard programme, currently standing at £8,810.95 with three categories of cost, ISP implementation fee, ISP annual fee and the Hampshire Pension Services resourcing to support the implementation.

10.2    The Committee was then updated on the non-statutory project of the Pension Website Review. Progress on this is ongoing and has a dedicated Digital Lead with an initial timeline in place. The overall project aim is to create a digitally accessible website and to connect with the analytics available.

10.3    The Pension Project and Governance Lead then informed the Committee on Governance issues covering Business Continuity Planning, the External Audit and the Internal Audit.

10.4    The Committee asked for further explanation as to the delay in the GMP Project. The Pensions Project and Governance Lead explained there had been a lack of communication on the parts of others outside of Westminster Council and had led to the risk of a delay, which Mercers had now informed Officers was now no longer the case. This delay centred around missing data sets that Westminster Council officers were not made aware were mandatory. It was reiterated to the Committee that this project is now due to be delivered on time, according to Mercers.

RESOLVED:

10.5    That the Committee noted the report.

10.6    The Committee agreed a sum of £710.95 for the HPS resourcing.

10.7    The Committee agreed a sum of £30,000.00 for the Pensions Project and Governance Lead to use for the completion of the GMP Project.