PPF: How we slashed assessment times with data push

One area which has exercised us enormously has been the quality of data we received from schemes and the steps we have needed to take to improve the quality of that data.  But, this has not been easy.

We have been developing a range of processes which will not only improve data quality but also speed up the assessment period

Putting the size of the task into perspective, we worked out that each member requires 190 individual pieces of data, so if you multiply that by the number of our members currently, we are looking at some 35m pieces of information which need to be accurate and up-to-date.

When we began, up-to-date information was hard to come by. Now, thanks to a lot of hard work by ourselves, the Pensions Regulator and schemes themselves, the quality of data is much improved.

It has helped reduce the time it takes to see schemes through assessment to less than two years – and in some cases, we have seen them complete assessment in months. This has reduced costs meaning when schemes transfer to us, liabilities are less. This is good news for us and our members.

But we want to provide even greater certainty to our members and schemes have an important role in helping us achieve this.

To support this, we have been developing a range of processes which will not only improve data quality but also speed up the assessment period.

Through our Assess & Pay programme, we have reduced the average assessment period from 35 months to less than 24 months for schemes which entered assessment after March 2011. This meant savings of £150,000 in individual scheme expenses.

The next major step was the introduction of panels covering trustee, actuarial, auditing and specialist administration services support, with a panel for lawyers coming on stream soon. These enable us to draw on expert knowledge to speed up the assessment process even more and cut costs further. The actuarial panel has already seen valuation costs being reduced by some 50 per cent.

We have been at great pains to emphasise with these panels how much importance we place on making sure we are working with the right data at all times.

When we bring our member administration services in-house later this year, we will be directly paying hundreds of thousands of our members and we must make sure that, while these members’ schemes were going through the assessment period, we end up with the correct data on all of them.

We have never prized customer service so highly and we intend to provide excellent service to everyone who has gone through unsettling times when their employers become insolvent and they stood to lose their pensions. These people want some reassurance in their lives – and that is something we aim to provide.

David Heslop is chief operating officer at the Pension Protection Fund