Agenda item

This paper sets out a summary of the performance of the Local Pension Partnership Administration providing a pension administration service to the Hammersmith & Fulham Fund.

The Chair welcomed John Crowhurst, Commercial Director of the Local Pension Partnership Administration (LPPA) who was joining the meeting for the first time.

John Crowhurst introduced the report which set out a summary of the performance of the LPPA in providing a pension administration service to the Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Fund. He detailed the casework performance against the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and helpdesk calls performance as set out in Appendix 1.

Noting that only two out of the 12 case types met the KPI performance target of 95% during the period between April and June 2022, Michael Adam asked about the key issues leading to the situation. John Crowhurst advised that accurate information from the employers was indispensable for the cases, in particular those involving active members, to proceed to the next step. It also took time for staff to communicate with the members back and forth.

Councillor Laura Janes also asked for more detail in the reports on the evaluation of KPI performance in terms of the number of cases not meeting the target of 95% and the number of days lagged behind. John Crowhurst confirmed he would ask for that granular detail to be included.

In reply to Councillor Florian Chevoppe-Verdier’s enquiry, John Crowhurst said that he would check what the charge was for members’ making calls to LPPA. Councillor Adrian Pascu-Tulbure asked if the LPPA had considered a call-back service to reduce wait times. John Crowhurst said they had not considered that but could explore it further. He noted the company was looking at giving callers a queue number.

Councillor Pascu-Tulbure noted with concern that the processing of death cases saw a dramatic decline in the number of cases processed on time, due to reduced resources with only 48.8% (i.e. 86 cases) being processed within the 5-day SLA. He sought information on the number of staff involved in processing the 86 cases from April to June 2022. In response, John Crowhurst advised that among some 200 administrative staff, 35 of them were in the Bereavement Team.  In view of the LPPA’s potential adoption of a client-centric approach and increasing staff turnover, arrangements were made for colleagues to receive cross-departmental training with a view for them to becoming more resilient under the new regime.

Councillor Janes expressed concern that payment might be discharged late to beneficiaries upon a member’s death. She considered a tougher threshold should be set in this regard.  John Crowhurst highlighted the work of the dedicated Bereavement Team which would breakdown the eligible pension benefits among the beneficiaries and arrange payment once the required paperwork was completed.

Councillor Alexandra Sanderson considered it important that beneficiaries’ calls were answered in less than 5 minutes.  Councillor Janes suggested setting up a special hotline for bereavement cases. John Crowhurst remarked that there was a separate queue for beneficiaries and the waiting time was generally less.

The Chair considered the KPI performance target of 95% was ambitious and preferred a more realistic target.  John Crowhurst said that the KPIs had been set out in the discharge of the SLA and the performance measures were discussed and reviewed on a monthly basis. While the KPIs in the first quarter of 2022 had improved since Q4 of 2021, there might have an impact on the Fund’s KPIs in early next year as LPPA resources would be stretched when it was migrating to the new pension administration platform by the end of 2022. John Crowhurst stated that the KPIs might need to be reviewed, with more achievable ones to be set in the future.  

RESOLVED

The Committee noted the report.