Agenda item

Phillippa Cockerill, Head of Pensions Administration, provided Members with an update on key initiatives undertaken by the administration team of the NYPF. The report included, as an Appendix, the report that was provided to the PFC at their November 2024 meeting.

 

The following issues were highlighted:-

 

PFC Report

 

The PFC report from 22 November 2024 meeting was provided as an Appendix.

 

Breaches

 

There had been one new entry in the breaches log since the previous meeting of the Board relating to:

 

The issuing of information to two members of the Fund, with both receiving each other’s details. The circumstances behind this were explained which had resulted from human error. The matter had been reported to Information Governance who considered the incident to be low level with no further action required. The circumstances had been discussed with the team to try and prevent this from happening again.

 

Annual Benefits Statements

 

Work had commenced on the 2025 annual benefits statements which have to include details relating to McCloud. It was expected that the data for this inclusion would be provided very late in the process, which could affect the date the statements are issued by.

 

Major projects

 

The i-Connect project continued to progress, with 238 employers onboarded. With 13 left to onboard, the target completion date to have all employers onboarded remained at 31 March 2025. In terms of the Pensions Regulator’s (tPR) General Code of Practice a review meeting was held with Aon in October 2024 to consider current compliance and it was noted that a number of sections were fully compliant. Further engagement was to be undertaken to address areas of non-compliance, with further updates provided in due course. It was noted that currently there was no deadline for full compliance.

 

The current focus for McCloud was ensuring that the data was correct for those members who had to have it included in their 2025 annual benefit statements. Following this, consideration will be given to any additional payments required and who should receive these.

 

Preparation work for the delivery of the Pensions’ Dashboard continued with data cleansing being undertaken ahead of its implementation. The Fund was aiming to have this in place by the end of May 2025, ahead of the required date of the end of October 2025. The deadline for all pension schemes to connect is October 2026. It is anticipated that the dashboard will be available to the general public at some point after this.

 

The updated, Fund specific, Business Continuity Plan had now been drafted and was with the NYC Cyber Security Team to provide an overview of what has been developed. The results would then be fed into the Emergencies and Resilience Team for the Plan to be implemented which was expected to take place shortly.

 

Local Government Pensions Committee (LGPC) Bulletins Log

 

Details of recent LGPC bulletins, and the response to those, were set out in the

report.

 

Members raised the following issues in respect of the report:-

 

·         It was clarified that the payments for McCloud were expected to be in place by the end of the year, with time, resources and the clarifying of data being the issues creating this timeframe. System changes would also be required for the annual benefits statements which would likely impact the issuing of these for 2025, however, all Funds will be in the same position in relation to this.

·         It was asked what the priorities of the NYPF would be in terms of disaster recovery. In response it was stated that the main priority was ensuring that pensions were paid. If the process could not be operated appropriately and payment was due, records from the previous month would be utilised to make an interim payment with any required top ups provided subsequently. Lump sum retirement payments could be affected, but these could be delayed for a week, with an advance sent where required. These details were set out in the Business Continuity Plan.

 

Resolved –

 

(i)            That the contents of the report be noted.

(ii)           That the contents of the Breaches Log be noted and it be recommended to the PFC that no report should be made to tPR in connection with the latest Breach referred to above.