Editorial: For the data controller (that's you)
While it may not receive the same frenzied attention as pension liberation, or hold the excitement of stewarding a growth portfolio, data protection is clearly of critical importance.
As ITS’s Janet Branagh writes this week, if you are a trustee, you are the scheme’s data controller, and the information commissioner clearly has a few sizeable carrots and sticks.
Back in 2012, Scottish Borders Council was fined £250,000 after employee's pension records were found "in an overfilled paper recycle bank in a supermarket car park", the ICO reported at the time.
Illustration by Ben Jennings
No one at the council had dumped them, but it was still fined for failing to get “appropriate guarantees” on data protection from a third party that was digitising the records.
If it is hard to imagine why a company would need to be told not to offload a mountain of sensitive paper records in a public place, but it only underlines the point that this area cannot be overlooked.
The spectre of the information commissioner looms large, and careless records could cost a surprising amount.
Time to renegotiate?
This week’s leading case study on LaFarge’s decision to give strong support to the funding of its UK pension fund presents an interesting point at which to ask what economic prospects could mean for funding negotiations.
The gradual recovery is certainly not leading to sponsors lining their schemes’ pockets, according to benefit experts, who have not yet seen contributions increase.
The Pensions Regulator’s new growth objective would seem to push against trustees being able to ask companies for much more security, if that means hard cash.
But the LaFarge case clearly demonstrates that regulator, scheme and employer can work together to help shut the deficit, with linking future payments to the company’s credit rating a smart move – tying a further improvement to the funding agreement directly to the sponsor’s business prospects.
Even with the employer growth objective, perhaps schemes are using the strengthening economy to ask for a little more.
Ian Smith is editor of Pensions Expert. You can follow him on Twitter @iankmsmith and the team @pensions_expert.