Agenda item

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At the Chair’s invitation, the Head of Pensions presented the report and explained the report demonstrated the Northampton Pension Fund’s financial end of year position. The Head of Pensions continued that there were a couple of completed procurement activities in the year, the retender for strategic investment advisory services and the retender for global custody services.

As part of the new business plan, work would continue to align members to West Northamptonshire Council as the administering authority for the Northamptonshire Pension Fund. The Head of Pensions explained the report requested the approval of two contracts, the benefits and governance contract by 6 months as detailed in section 4.3.3 of the report and the extension of the specialist legal services contract by 12 months as detailed in 5.1.3. He explained the Pension Fund were happy with their suppliers and were looking to manage their procurement over a couple of years.

The Head of Pensions shared that the Fund were not considering obtaining the Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) accreditation at this time due to other commitments as the Fund would not be able to accommodate this along with managing the workload of the other activities, they would be undertaking for 2022/2023. The Fund had recently undertaken a customer service excellent accreditation, and this had helped customer journeys as customer satisfaction ratings received from the surveys sent to members were averaging 4.3 out of 5, which was a significant improvement from a rating of 3.1 a year ago. The Head of Pensions explained he proposed that the Fund did not need to undertake the accreditation at this time and would revisit in the future as significant improvements had already been made.

Members questioned how important the accreditation was to the fund and obtaining investments. The Head of Pensions responded that the accreditation demonstrated a standard and would take a considerable amount of work to achieve and he felt the Fund had already undertaken a considerable amount of work to achieve an excellent standard in customer service. In terms of investment, the Head of Pensions confirmed he had checked with the Executive Director of Finance and they did not believe it would have any affect.

The Head of Pensions continued his presentation and explained that the review of the Pension Regulator’s Code of Practice had been rescheduled for 2022/2023 as it was expected to be released in November/December 2021 but the released had been delayed. The age remedy and rectification project activities would be continued in 2022/2023 and would be included in new business plan. As well as the valuation of the pension fund that would take place from April 2022 onwards. Other activities for the business plan included processing of undecided leaver records and reviewing the contract for specialist pensions legal services. The additional voluntary contribution (AVC) review had been completed by AON and the Head of Pensions flagged to the committee that missing AVC statements was a potential breach that could appear on the future breaches list.

The Head of Pensions reminded members of the recommendations as detailed in section 3 and concluded his report.

Members discussed the report.

RESOLVED: That the Pension Committee:

1) Noted the Business Plan Update to the end of the financial year.

2) Approved the extension of the benefits and governance contract by a period of 6 months (4.3.3).

3) Approved the extension of the specialist legal services contract by a period of 12 months (5.1.3).