Agenda item

This paper sets out a summary of the performance of the Local Pension Partnership Administration in providing a pension administration service to the Hammersmith & Fulham Pension Fund. The Key Performance Indicators for the period April 2022 – September 2022, i.e., Quarter 1 (Q1) and Quarter 2 (Q2) inclusive, are shown in the Appendices, Quarter 3 results were not available at the time this report was written.

Eleanor Dennis (Head of Pensions) gave a summary of the performance of the Local Pension Partnership Administration (LPPA) in providing a pension administration service to the Hammersmith & Fulham Pension Fund (HFPF) in respect of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the period April 2022 – September 2022, i.e., Quarter 1 (Q1) and Quarter 2 (Q2) inclusive.

Councillor Rory Vaughan said he was pleased to see an improvement in LPPA’s service between Q1 and Q2.  Noting that the Pension Fund Committee (PFC) had scrutinised the performance of LPPA a few times and that some issues could be due to teething problem, he asked about the expected timing for LPPA’s quarterly Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance to meet the target of 95% having regard that it was on board for one year already.

Eleanor Dennis considered that the poor performance of LPPA in Q2 was mainly due to the lack of resources and priority to its planning and preparation of migrating to a new software platform for all LPPA clients.  In fact, the KPIs for Q3 and Q4 were relaxed to take into account the transition to the new system.  In terms of a recovery plan to meet the target, she noted that the LPPA would have presented their business plan to PFC and all clients by the end of the month. Councillor Vaughan believed that the PFC would keep LPPA “on-track” and asked Eleanor to convey this Board’s concerns to the LPPA.

ACTION: Eleanor Dennis

In response to Neil Newton’s enquiry, Eleanor Dennis confirmed that the internal migration had completed as planned in December 2022. The outgoing platform service provider had exited earlier than anticipated and this was why the migration had caused a bigger impact on the services that had been anticipated for all LPPA’s clients.

On the question of complaints received from scheme members raised by Neil Newton, Eleanor Dennis noted that there was not anything in the portal advising people on the quality of services.  The LPPA did ask callers to feedback on customers’ level of satisfaction which was 66% for Q2.  However, the statistics were not fund specific and hence did not represent scheme members of HFPF.  As regard how could a caller who had abandoned a call after waiting for 9 minutes express dissatisfaction, Eleanor noted that a formal complaint process was highlighted on the Fund's external website through which individuals might lodge complaints with the LPPA or HFPF as well as via the in-house pensions team.  The LPPA were reporting the helpdesk statistics on a fortnightly basis to the Head of Pensions. In fact, her team had received a higher number of complaints at the beginning of the migration. To minimise the negative experience of the scheme members during the migration, staff in her team did take on queries to resolve directly with LPPA on the members’ or employers’ behalf to help those members who wanted to get in touch or with issues to resolve during the poor performance period. 

Neil Newton remarked that the helpdesk call statistics had noted the wait time range when the calls were received which however did not cover the number of people who had abandoned their calls after waiting for certain minutes.  Eleanor Dennis noted that abandoned rate was shared with her, but she would ask if this could be made available. She understood that the Managing Director had sat on the helpdesk, trying to understand the issues involved and work out measures that could help alleviate the number of the calls and minimise the wait time. The Chair noted that in January 2022, 90% of calls were answered.  He asked whether the 10% unanswered calls were abandoned calls. Eleanor advised that the calls referred to those answered within 4 minutes. Councillor Vaughan considered that the “Calls Answered” statistics would have a higher reference value if it also counted unanswered calls abandoned, say, after 5 mins.  Eleanor undertook to ask LPPA for more information on abandonment rate.

ACTION: Eleanor Dennis

Councillor Vaughan considered a call-back service would be helpful in saving people hanging up. Eleanor Dennis said this had been raised by the PFC also and that call-back service was among the options the LPPA would look at in the future.

Noting that the number of calls had fallen during summer 2022 but it took longer for the calls to be answered, the Chair asked for the reasons.  Eleanor Dennis said that less calls might be due to summer holiday and more people engaged online with the portal.  For calls taking longer to answer, Eleanor highlighted that resources were stretched in planning for system migration during the summer months, taking away resources from the core service however noting that bereavement calls were triaged so that they went straight through to the bereavement team and did not sit on a queue. She said that there had been an improvement in service between Q1 and Q2 of LPPA providing an administration service to the Fund, however, there remained room for improvement from LPPA in terms of both the KPIs and on the Helpdesk calls.

RESOLVED

That the Board noted the report, in particular the complaint handling mechanism.