Heywood Pension Tech
Heywood, PASA’s technology partner, can help you incorporate their latest guidance into the smooth running of your Pension Scheme.
Accurate data forms the bedrock of a scheme’s ability to pay savers the pension benefits they are due. PASA has recently published guidance on how Data should be managed by DB schemes. The latest guidance focuses on five core areas – benefit specification, data specification, benefit audit, automation, and independent assurance.
The guidance sets out how Benefit and Data Specifications are the key elements that need to be as accurate as can be to administer a scheme effectively. With these two well-maintained elements in place, all positive administration outcomes are possible. They provide the foundation for calculating and paying all member benefits, facilitating regulatory reporting, conducting scheme audits, and enabling the automation of various processes and calculations within the scheme. As PASA’s technology partner, we at Heywood couldn’t agree more.
While the benefit specification will have been put together over time, it becomes a living document when used in conjunction with a scheme’s data specification, which evolves with all the changes happening in the world of pensions admin right now. It’s by reference to the scheme rules that we know which data items we need to hold and maintain to provide accurate benefits to the member, and accurate regulatory reporting. These two sources of scheme information, namely benefit and data specification, reinforce each other and together provide the building blocks for the day-to-day running of a scheme.
Therefore, it’s essential that this information is kept up to date, and most importantly in pension administration, that schemes keep on top of the data and any challenges presented with ensuring its accuracy and maintaining its integrity on an ongoing basis.
Beyond the immediate drivers like ISP preparation, GMP projects, and de-risking opportunities, data readiness and benefit scrutiny remain paramount. PASA strongly advocates for ongoing maintenance of data and benefits as a prerequisite for effective scheme management. This mandates Pensions Administration teams to maintain a steady cycle of data cleansing and benefit audits, regardless of industry currents. Data accuracy must be seamlessly incorporated into BAU, moving on from the tendency for these to be ineffective one-off exercises.
Heywood Head of Data Services David Rich is on the working group at PASA that put together the latest guidance. He says: “This is a vital element of scheme administration for de-risking transactions, dashboards, GMP rectification and ensuring members receive the benefits that are due to them. The topic of data rears its head again, where missing data hinders the application of calculation automation.”
At Heywood, our comprehensive data and pension benefit solutions help schemes meet their data challenges head-on. Our audit tools help schemes understand their data and benefit information, identify inaccuracies, and help schemes update member records and maintain a consistently high level of accuracy. The recent addition of our enhanced calculation auditing capabilities includes a standalone rules-based engine that helps map, check, compare and deploy pensions scheme rules and calculations on a system-agnostic basis.
