On the go: The Department for Education has renewed its contract with outsourcer Capita for the administration of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme.
The contract, worth £60m over four years, continues a relationship that has been in place for more than 20 years, and bolsters Capitas pension client roster after the exit of Barnet’s branch of the Local Government Pension Scheme in February.
“In addition to the core administration process, the contract covers multiple services, including: all stakeholder, member and employer engagement; customer contact and digital solutions; data analytics; and change management and innovation,” Capita said in an announcement to investors on Monday morning.
In serving the scheme’s 2m members, the company said it would be overseeing “the collection of contributions from more than 11,200 employers, and the calculation and payment of pensions to more than 700,000 pensioners and beneficiaries”.
Chantal Free, executive officer for Capita’s people solutions division, said: “We are very proud of our partnership with the Department for Education and the Teachers’ Pension Scheme team. I am delighted that the department chose to extend our contract for four more years.”
However, the calculation of pensions has been a stumbling block for the provider, which underpaid up to 93,000 members of the TPS between 2011 and 2015.
A rectification project was launched in 2017 to correct the error, which occurred when retirement factors dependent on HM Treasury data were not applied to certain members’ payment sums.
