Girish Menezes discusses the importance of supporting pension administrators.

Pension administrators are the key touch point between two very different realms.

A world peopled with Actuaries, Investment Consultants, Asset Managers and Pension Lawyers and the citizens of our country who rely on us to invest their hard earned money and pay them an accurate sum of money month after month once they retire.

It is possibly the least appreciated link in the pension's value chain and offers our 'masters' the least margin, if any at all.

Yet, it is the face of pensions that the world sees when they get their annual benefit statement, their retirement quote and, again, when they receive their pension.

Pension administrators come into work every morning wanting to do their very best.

However, many are faced with poor quality data, legacy administration platforms and are driven by SLA targets rather than quality of service and often 'supported' by poorly drafted Trustee rules & deeds. Despite this, when faced with a potential error, I have found that it is usually the member, their IFA or even the Client who has created the issue, rather than the administrator.

It is time that we recognise the administrator's plight, support them appropriately and allow them to deliver to the standards that they would like to meet and members would like to receive.

The world has moved on from the Trust-based non-contributory defined benefit pension scheme to the fully-automated and online auto-enrolment-minimum defined contribution scheme.

Pension administration is following, morphing from a world of dusty files and calculators to one of Robo-advice and pension dashboards.

However, for legacy Trust-based pension schemes to deliver to the high standards of service expected in 21st century Britain, they need investment.

Data needs to be cleaned, scheme rules need to be streamlined, calculations need to be automated, communication needs to be simplified and systems need to be integrated.

Good quality pension administration firms invest in their pension administration platforms, administrator training, their standard communication and their online functionality.

They work closely with their Trustee partners to clean scheme data, automate calculations and offer member self-service.

In a world of increasingly requested transfer value quotations and de-risking exercises, these investments are more than merely good governance.

They reduce cost and enhance the service provided to our members.

Recognising a gap between the practices of well-run administration schemes from the rest, the Pensions Administration Standards

Association was set up with the core purpose of bringing the industry together and agreeing a set of standards that we could all be proud of delivering and members would be happy to receive.

It is essential that Trustees and Sponsors recognise the enormous importance of increasing the standards of pension administration and support our pension administration firms with the financial investments required for these projects and possibly a small premium in running costs.

The Pension Regulator expects higher standards from schemes. Our members have increased expectations in a world of self-driving cars and 3D printers.

The investment will prevent expensive and embarrassing errors. But most importantly, it will allow our pension administrators to feel the pride of a job well done.

Written by Girish Menezes, PASA Board Member.