Administration and assurance |
We have an established pension administration practice which has been in operation since 1996. We have structured our pension administration team with particular emphasis on quality control and procedural accuracy which are critical to delivering a high quality, cost effective service to Trustees.
We have extensive experience of defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid pension schemes. We agree Service Level Agreements on a case-by-case basis to reflect the needs of our clients. As part of our service we would report to the Trustees against the Service Level Agreements regularly at Trustee’s meetings.
Administration services
In addition to our ongoing administration services including processing joiners, leavers, transfers and retirements, our offering includes :
- Pension existence – maintaining an up to date record of current pensioners to avoid payment to dead pensioners;
- Fraud and duplication – checking for duplicate or fraudulent member records;
- Deferred member addresses – enabling efficient communication with members, so reducing mailing expenses; and
- Data validation – understanding the completeness of data on the database and the impact this has on system functionality, benefit calculations and administrator performance.
We also offer administration consulting services including:
- Quality review of existing third party administration
- Internal review of process and calculations of third party administrator
- Administration outsourcing review
- Independence support with tender process.
An increased focus on the administration of pension schemes can also help to directly increase the performance and value of the fund. For example, increased oversight and management of VAT will offer opportunities for maximising VAT recoveries – thereby reducing cost to the scheme and increasing value.
Assurance services
Our internal audit services assist trustees and company sponsors of pension schemes in enhancing their enterprise-wide risk management process. We do this through comprehensively assessing the scheme risks and the design and effectiveness of internal controls within the scheme’s operations and information technology environments. Our services can be provided jointly with existing scheme or company's internal audit resources or as an outsourced arrangement.
We provide internal audit assurance tailored to the needs of each scheme to ensure optimisation of value and expertise. Some of the areas we have expertise in are:
- Governance
- Service provider evaluations
- Compliance and fraud
- Data security and management
- Treasury management
- Valuation of investments
- Contributions and benefits administration
We have the breadth and depth of experience in providing internal audit services ranging from complex scheme arrangements for a multi employer scheme to individual projects resulting from major scheme design and strategy changes, implementation of new systems and processes or changes in third-party service providers.
