Around 60 delegates were in attendance at 18 Smith Square on 3 April 2019, to hear a host of industry experts reflect on why data is so important for the Firefighters’ and Police Pension Schemes, and how technology can play a part in getting data right.

The audience first heard a joint presentation by DWP and Aquila Heywood on the implementation of the Pensions Dashboard and how this might work in practice for Fire and Police schemes. DWP gave an update on the response to their "working together for the consumer" consultation which closed on 28 January 2019; the LGA Bluelight team provided a response on behalf of the Scheme Advisory Board (SAB).

ITM provided an insight on data improvement plans and discussed the work undertaken with the Cabinet Office to improve their member data. This was followed by a session by Civica on using technology to communicate with members and the increasing value of offering a member self-service portal, considering that the introduction of the dashboard will drive expectation for digital solutions.

The afternoon opened with a workshop session on data scoring for TPR, led by Aquila Heywood and LGA. Last year for the first time, schemes were required to measure both their common and scheme specific data for the annual return. The LGA issued some informal guidance on how this might be carried out and will be reviewing this for 2019 based on workshop feedback. We would like to thank delegates for their participation in this session.

We were delighted to welcome GAD to give an update on the 2016 scheme valuation for FPS, focusing on the importance of the data that feeds in to the process, the reasons that some data items were excluded from assumption setting this time around, and how this could be improved for 2020.

The final session of the day was delivered by Equiniti and discussed the HMRC scheme reconciliation exercise, covering where schemes should be by now and what is left to do.

The presentation slide decks from the data event held on 3 April 2019 are available via the LGA Events page.

To view the full conference in pictures, visit our @LGAWorkforce twitter feed, #LGAfirepensions

Around 70 delegates and exhibitors attended the data seminar held at 18 Smith Square, Westminster on 29 March 2018. Thanks to all those who contributed to the success of the event.

The conference aimed to look from a pensions perspective at the requirements of becoming both GDPR compliant and meeting TPR expectations, and was intended for data controllers (scheme managers), Data Protection Officers, data processors (administrators), Local Pension Boards and industry experts.

The audience enjoyed absorbing presentations from the LGA, ITM and TPR, along with practical tips from Local Authority colleagues, and had opportunity to view some of the solutions on offer from software suppliers. 

Click on the link to view the complete presentation slide deck from the data event held on 29 March 2018.