We were pleased to welcome 60 delegates to Smith Square and 80 delegates joined us virtually on 17 May 2023, to hear a host of industry experts take part in panel sessions to reflect on why data is so important for the Firefighters’ and Police Pension Schemes.
Our hosts for the day were Phil Wells, Assistant Chief Officer, Bedfordshire Police and Gavin Chambers, Assistant Chief Officer, Bedfordshire Fire.
The day was split into four interactive panel sessions and a workshop. The sessions were:
- Successful Project Implementation.
- Engaging members after dashboards.
- Cost of the Scheme.
- Owning the narrative to make strategic decisions.
The audience first heard from Clair Alcock, Head of Police Pensions, NPCC, who spoke about Successful project implementation on the imminent McCloud exercise.
Jo Darbyshire, Managing Director, LPPA, then held our first panel of the day, her panellists were Taylor Brightwell-Smith, Pensions Consultant, GAD, Leanne Ferreira, Project Specialist, XPS and Helen Scargill, Client Relationship Manager, West Yorkshire Pension Fund. Who were asked questions to share their knowledge, experience and concerns over the Mcloud Data exercise.
Delegates both in person and virtually took part in a workshop to discuss: How FRA’s were ensuring the quality of data to be provided to their administrators? How had their experience been so far, including any unexpected challenges and how had they overcome them? What their lessons learnt so far had been?
We then welcomed Andrew Lowe, Co-Chair of PASA Dashboard Committee, ITM, who gave a presentation on engaging members after dashboards, before joining our second panel, chaired by Chris Connelly, Chief Strategy Officer, Heywoods, and the other panellists Graeme Hall, Operations Manager, XPS, and Paul Turpin, Pensions Advisor, Police Federation
The afternoon session was opened by James Allen, First Actuarial and Robert Fornear, GAD, who gave an insightful overview of the valuation process, including calculations, assumptions, and outcomes. Not the easiest of sessions for them following lunch, but I think it would be fair to say that they kept us all engaged and provided a very useful session.
The final session of the day was delivered by John Simmonds, Principle, CEM Benchmarking. John provided a useful session on benchmarking before joining our final panel of the day, chaired by Jo Donnelly, Head of Pensions, LGA, and other panellists Jennifer Atthey, Senior Manager, Isio, Alison Murray, Partner, Aon and Jo Darbyshire, Managing Director LPPA. Jo was able to share LPPA’s experience of using CEM Benchmarking’s services, and what they use the outcomes for. Alison and Jennifer were able to share the barriers that they had both experienced when collecting data to provide separately the Fire and Police Scheme Advisory Boards with a report on the Cost of the Scheme
The presentation slide decks from the data event held on 17 May 2023
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.