Reducing data submission breaches by 91%
Warwickshire County Council
Warwickshire County Council administers the Local Government Pension Fund (LGPS) for eligible employees of scheduled and admitted employers within the county boundary.
With over 17,000 active members and 190 employers, the fund’s assets amount to over £2 billion.
Warwickshire County Council are one of the founding members of the CLASS Group and registered to use i-Connect in September 2020.
Overview
Poor quality data impacts all aspects of pensions administration.
Data is the bedrock of pensions administration; employers supply virtually all of the data that the fund holds for members.
Due to the risk of employers submitting incorrect data, Warwickshire County Council’s fund administration team devoted a vast amount of time to capturing, manually intervening and rectifying upload errors.
Warwickshire subsequently changed the pension administration strategy to require monthly, electronic employer data submissions.
With a track record of simplifying data interactions between employers and funds, Heywood’s i-Connect software was a natural fit to support this strategy and save the fund valuable time.
The project
The implementation was conducted in four phases, initially focusing on the employers already familiar with using i-Connect to submit data to other funds.
The implementation phases operated on a flexible basis, working with the employers due to submit their first set of data. The exercise proved that receiving good quality data was worth a one-off programme of effort to create process and operational efficiencies.
With data submissions requiring a ‘correct first-time’ approach, employers welcomed the introduction of i-Connect.
The secure and accessible data exchange portal collecting all data in one batch negated the need for multiple systems, making the data submission a straightforward process.
The benefits:
- The automated exchange enabled employers to submit timely data and payments, resulting in a 91% reduction in breaches compared to the previous year
- 97% of Annual Benefit Statements were produced for the first time without error due to regular data updates, representing a 20% increase from the previous year
- Queries from the fund to employers dropped by 93% due to i-Connect’s automated data checks
- Time was saved on setting up new starters. The fund’s four administration colleagues previously shared this responsibility and are now able to focus on other activities
- Deferred benefits and estimates are processed swiftly due to no longer waiting for information from the employer
The results
91%
reduction in data and payment submission breaches
190
participating employers
97%
of Annual Benefit Statements generated without error
93%
reduction in fund to employer queries
£80,000
worth of time saved
"i-Connect has made a significant impact on our ability to get Annual Benefit Statements out by the statutory deadline. The year before we implemented i-Connect we produced 81% of statements first time but only after raising over 3,000 queries with the employers. This year we produced 97% of statements first time and had under 200 employer queries."