Two out of three pension professionals blame poor IT for the lack of preparation to meet the Government's Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) deadline, according to new research.

The research, from information management specialists EDM Group, found that 67% of respondents blame legacy systems and poor IT infrastructure for the fact they are largely unprepared to meet the Government's April 2016 deadline.

None of the respondents believe DB schemes' data and systems generally are totally prepared to meet the 2016 deadline and only 15% think they are reasonably prepared.

The research also shows that two out of five (40%) believe a lack of digitisation of data is to blame for this state of low preparedness.

Other reasons cited included: the scale and costs of addressing the requirements are not clearly understood (53%); lack of awareness of the requirements/issues (50%); it is not seen as a priority (38%); records are held in digital format but the critical data has not been extracted (28%); and pension schemes have found it difficult to deal with the proliferation in the number of channels customers can use to communicate with schemes, such as social media (10%).

More than half (53%) of pension professionals believe that it is 'extremely' or 'somewhat' important for DB schemes to have all their data in digital format by April 2016.

Around 4,500 pension schemes in the UK are affected by the GMP changes, but many of these are expected to struggle to meet the deadline because their information is inconsistent and held on a variety of formats such as paper and microfiche going back several decades.

Lee Foord, associate director for EDM Pensions Data Services, said: "In this day and age it is surprising to see the extent to which pension schemes are still handling data recorded on paper and microfiche. This is because the records often go back over several decades"

"Schemes still might have carried on functioning in this way but for the advent of the single tier pension, which means they now have to focus on getting their data in order to meet the April 2016 deadline. Digitising data will be the best way to achieve that, especially given that the Government's reconciliation service will only provide access online."

Foord added that while trustees may be "intimidated by the challenge", they should take comfort in the fact that digitising data is actually much simpler and less costly than they might realise.

First published - 16.10.2014

Lindsay.sharman@wilmington.co.uk