Agenda item

The Pension Administration Lead will present a full closure report, including a transfer update to Oracle of unfunded pensions.

James Franklin, Pension Administration Lead, presented a full closure report, including a transfer update to Oracle of unfunded pensions. The update included but was not limited to that this report had been produced following final round of testing for the migration from Oracle to the Integrated Payroll System. The report noted that a series of parallel run testes had been conducted with 99% accuracy received. It was noted that there had been 18 net differences down to taxations therefore it was agreed that the system could go live.

It was noted that when the live payment took place in October 2024, the following discrepancies were found:

• 38 members where the gross payment did not match, amounting to £16,247.54.
• 4 of these members were suspended on Oracle and contacted the Fund so could be reinstated in the October payment,
• 32 members were paying back previous overpayments, and the repayment had been incorrectly ceased on Oracle; these were corrected on the first payment from Altair,
• 2 members were paid incorrectly due to data migration issues and were corrected

It was outlined that there had been a number of issues experienced during and following the payroll migration including that the HMRC payment link had been broken, therefore manual payments and submissions had to be made. Changes to member details that occurred after the final data cut were not passed to the

Fund from the Council payroll team, therefore resulting in a higher number of queries relating to incorrect addresses and in some cases bank details. A further similar issue occurred regarding overseas issues which has since been resolved with the system now fully automated and on the online platform.

Detail was provided that regarding the immediate payment reconciliation process, a report from Altair had suggested that this was not as planned, therefore this was being worked on by Heywood with calls regularly taking place every two weeks and the issue raised up the priority list. Additionally, it was noted that when paying a death grant, Altair only allowed for two recipients at a time, which had been raised by other Funds with it hoped that this issue could be resolved by the end of the calendar year.

The Committee discussed the report with it suggested that the Fund had not been served well by Heywood, to which officers clarified that there had also been issues caused by the Fund and that the relationship was being worked on by both parties. Clarity was provided that Heywood did not see the death grant issue as high priority, however it was hoped that if other funds raised the same issue this would collectively help to push the issue.

Officers provided detail on how records are suspended on Oracle as well as the process involved with finding out the death of a member. Assurance was also provided that had members not received payment on time, the Fund would have paid out compensation directly for this had the issues been the Fund’s fault.

At the conclusion of debate, it was,

Resolved:

The Committee agreed:

a)    To note the successful outcome of the migration to our Integrated Payroll System and the steps taken to resolve any resulting issues.