Data
Member Data
Regular, high quality data from our employers and a thorough analysis process ensures that we hold current, up to date and accurate information on our members.
Monthly data
i-Connect is a data exchange portal for employers to provide monthly data for automated processing on the pensions administration system. The system provides employers with a secure method of providing updates including starters, amendments, leavers, contributions, salaries and CARE pay.
All employers were required to provide monthly data from 2017 using i-Connect by way of a monthly file extracted from the payroll system or more recently by completing an online return. This has been achieved by working together and both the Fund and employers are enjoying the benefits delivered from automated processing, one of which is improved data quality.
Data Quality
Measuring and improving the quality of data held by pension scheme administrators is high on the agenda of the Pensions Regulator. Data quality held by funds impacts directly on the calculation of member benefits and determines the level of comfort that both funds and participating employers can have around the valuation of the liabilities calculated by the scheme actuary.
As data is collected and reconciled on a monthly basis the NESPF hold consistently high quality data. Validation of the data processed by the transferring system and reconciliation of the data received ensures that inaccurate or missing data is caught at source or queried upon receipt.
As part of the annual scheme return to the Pensions Regulator all funds are required to score the quality of their data and percentages achieved by NESPF are displayed below.
Data Improvement Plan
Work continues to improve and maintain our data through a data quality improvement plan which is used in conjunction with in-depth reports provided by the data analysis service we use to score our data for the Pension Regulator.
The plan has four objectives:
- To maintain the accuracy of members records to ensure that benefits held and paid are correct
- To meet the regulatory requirements of pension administration including the Pension Regulator Code of Practice 14
- To provide comfort to the Administering Authority and participating employers in the accuracy of the actuarial results based on the quality of the data provided
- To ease the administrative burden of incomplete or inaccurate records.
