PASA issues updated Covid-19 guidance

The new guidance resulted from a review by PASA of best practice across the administration sector, and is intended to assist administrators in preparing for a post-lockdown world.

“All administrators should have learned something new during the past few months, whether that’s about their people, their technology or their members,” said PASA chair Kim Gubler.

“PASA has pulled together these learnings to shape our guidance. We hope organisations can use this to learn from each other’s experiences as they look to implement their plans for the future.”

Among the standout findings informing the new guidance was the fact that, despite Covid-19 putting unprecedented strain on older forms of member communication — such as letters, telephone calls — due to administrators being locked out of their offices, many of the 56 pension schemes covered by PASA’s research had no online visibility. 

“Even where web is available, the proportion of schemes with fully cleansed data, an enriched functionality member web, and a record of their member’s email addresses is very low,” the guidance stated.  

“This was a major issue during lockdown and separated the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. This trilogy of good data/web/email is critical to enable efficient services and any acceleration to online solutions without addressing data will widen the gap.”

Though less represented online than younger generations, the fact that older people show increasing digital savvy, with half having access to a tablet computer, means that “it’s no longer a valid response to state older people will automatically not engage digitally”, it added.

The guidance concluded that increasing online visibility is important for scheme administrators, and for those schemes that already have websites, cleaning up the quality of information provided is also key. 

However, the guidance cautioned against an approach that would mean those unable to communicate online “are lost in the drive for a technological future”.

Other topics covered by the updated guidance include digital workflow, continuing projects like guaranteed minimum pension equalisation that may have been paused by the pandemic, homeworking, and updating identity verification systems.

Perhaps pre-empting the charge that guidance for a post-lockdown world is optimistic or premature, it warned: “If the Covid-19 R rate increases regionally, administrators need to plan for future full or partial local lockdowns.

“If these happen, it’s likely to be at short notice and administrators will need to be able to switch office-based centralised processes into remote functions quickly.”

Ms Gubler said: “We’re realising we can no longer talk about ‘returning to normal’, but rather how we can adapt and evolve the way high-quality administration is delivered in future.

“Overall, the pensions administration sector has coped admirably with the challenges created by Covid-19. Many administrators had already anticipated the need for some form of remote working and had triggered their Covid-specific business continuity plans.

“In our initial guidance, we stated that administrators needed to be resilient in the face of the lockdown’s challenges. As we move forward this is even more critical.”  

She continued: “Lockdown was a one-time measure imposed on us all, at the same time. However, the rate and the way administrators react and respond to the easing of lockdown will be very different, driven by how their own organisations implement their office return plans.

“Each will have to map their own path according to a huge number of factors.  As administrators move forward, they need both flexibility to accommodate different ways of working, and the differing needs of members.”