Admin Panel (November 2007) - Press intoservice

CHAIRMAN: MARK SMITH
Senior Consultant
Lane Clark & Peacock
Smith joined Lane Clark & Peacock after 10 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He joined the employee benefit consulting with particular responsibility for developing LCP’s communication capabilities. Smith has advised his pensions and HR clients on governance and operational effectiveness for over 17 years. He has a chemistry PhD and is an associate of the Pensions Management Institute and a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

CLIVE WICKENDEN
Client Services Director
Capita Hartshead
In his current role, Wickenden oversees the relationships with all of Capita Hartshead’s private sector clients and ensures a consistent strategy is followed. He also has responsibility for ensuring Capita Hartshead listens to its clients and provides a service that matches their needs. To monitor this, Wickenden carries out client satisfaction reviews and is involved in producing and collating member feedback surveys.

BRIAN CRITCHELL
Account Manager
Xafinity Paymaster
Critchell is head of account management for Paymaster’s statutory and public service scheme and responsible for the company’s technical developments team. He has 40 years’ experience in pensions, half with a major global consulting firm. He is vice-president of the PMI, a regular speaker and contributor on behalf of both the PMI and Paymaster.

MALCOLM REYNOLDS
Commercial Director
JLT Benefit Solutions
Reynolds’s role is as national director of the benefits administration practice that provides advice to clients on operational administration effectiveness. Reynolds is a member of the JLT executive and has over 15 years’ experience in the pensions industry. He was previously a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he spent 11 years and was responsible for the pensions management consultancy services. Reynolds was also a director at Profound Systems.

MARK WILLIS
Client Manager
MNPA
Willis is client manager at MNPA and joined in August 2007. He is the primary point of contact for members, trustees, company and scheme advisors with responsibility for ensuring that everyone’s needs and expectations are understood and met by MNPA. Prior to joining MNPA he worked as a consultant in the change of implementation practice in human resources.


CHAIRMAN: MARK SMITH
1Demand for client information online is growing, whether this is the ability to view member records, interrogate data, obtain management information about performance or access documents such as administration reports. How do you think client requirements in this area will develop and how do you see the TPA market responding to meet those changing needs?

2 Automatic enrolment is on the agenda for 2012. For DC schemes this will heighten the need for easy access to good member education prior to joining the scheme. Technology will clearly have an important role to play in ensuring members make the right decisions. How do you see technology and the new entrant process changing to accommodate this change?

3 Customer care is a vital component of excellent service delivery. What aspects of the service do you think are particularly important to customers now and how might this change in the future?

4Service level agree-ments are still the most commonly used measure and clients can have an expectation these should consistently be 100pc. Is this achievable and, if not, what expectations in terms of service measures should TPAs be recommending to clients?


CLIVE WICKENDEN
1We are all aware of the rise of the web and its growing use in society. Increasing numbers of schemes have developed or are developing websites that provide a more interactive experience for the user, rather than just the ability to view static documents. We envisage the further development of management information provision via the dashboard concept, as well as provision of scheme information to prospective members and the facility to enroll online.

2 As mentioned above, we believe these are the two areas that will need to be developed as quickly as possible. Today’s society is becoming more and more information hungry, and the challenge for our industry is ensure we provide for the needs of both members and prospective members in media formats that are accessible, interesting and easy to understand. As well as the internet, other communication formats must be considered, such as interactive DVDs and hard copy.
With regard to the new entrant process, it will be important for prospective scheme members to have modelling tools available to illustrate the costs and benefits of joining the scheme.

3 Most members want to be seen as a valued customer. This is easily achieved by ensuring that members receive the correct information at the correct time, and by making sure that the overall customer experience runs smoothly. The aggregation of minor factors can make an individual feel let down, even if his or her benefits are correct and paid on time. Such factors include:
• Ensuring that any explanatory literature is understandable;
• That any forms requiring completion are uncluttered and not too complicated, and
• When queries arise, there is someone available to provide answers or reassurance and that individual shows empathy with the enquirer.
As new technology becomes more prevalent we as an industry must remember these little things which, in the customers’ eyes, are critical.

4 While SLA performance is still the most commonly used measure of service, I believe that we are all becoming much more aware of qualitative reporting, including comments received from members and the results of member surveys completed by members who have recently dealt with the TPA.


Brian Critchell
1That clients wish to monitor performance more closely reflects the increased emphasis on governance. Good TPAs should first work with their clients to review stewardship reports to agree good governance practice, replace where sensible quantitative with qualitative measures, considering new measures to help identify trends and better control risks.
Good TPAs will help clients clarify what they expect to gain from online access, prioritise information needs, and design and build a shared workspace accordingly. Good design will help trustees overloaded with paper focus on the key measures and drill into back up documents, only if they need to. Duplicate member data can be provided, subject to DPA requirements, and refreshed periodically.

2 The most important thing is member engagement. Many members still prefer information in paper format. To ensure effective communication, complementary paper and online information should be supplied to employees so they can pick the one they prefer. The main messages must be simple and clear with links to more detailed information.
Some say online information and joining should be pitched at people in the same way as banking and shopping. This could make the pension experience seem more immediate and relevant and overcome hesitation. Paul Myners said recently that personal accounts will “set the standards” for the rest of the industry. It is a challenge for us all to achieve our targets on charges because online enrolment alone will not suffice. There must be personal interaction somewhere in the process and we haven’t defined it cost-effectively yet.

3There are different aspects to customer care. We must focus on the end users of our services and ensure they can access well-trained, caring professionals to resolve their diverse issues, so they feel valued and appreciate the experience.
Then there is the service issues and concerns of clients. The professional administrator will demonstrate awareness and understanding of client business objectives; by providing technical updates and bulletins that help make them aware of wider issues; and by suggesting ways in which they might be addressed to mutual benefit.

4It is important to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative measures. For accuracy and timeliness of benefit payments, the aim must always be 100pc. Transaction turnaround times need to allow for complexity of process and the number of different parties involved, but with the bar set to identify the few problem cases that will arise inevitably – 100pc of all cases within turnaround target is neither realistic nor “SMART”.


MALCOLM REYNOLDS
1The enthusiasm for online solutions is increasing and will continue to do so. So many of us are now used to a retail world where you can access tailored information over the web and this is helping to drive an expected position from pensions administration providers. This enthusiasm must, however, be managed carefully and trustees and pensions managers must act responsibly when establishing on line services.
Online information needs to be specific to the audience for which it was intended so as to not confuse the reader and any online actions need to be carefully thought through to ensure that members cannot “accidentally” take an action that was not intended and becomes irreparable down the track.
There appears to be no reason why trustees should not provide static information (copies of booklets, members’ reports and accounts and the forms needed to apply for membership) online as this will become a standard low-risk, cost-effective method of communication.
The real need, of course, is to ensure we do not disenfranchise anyone because they do not have access to the web (be that “inter-” or “intra-” or because they are predisposed to mistrusting of the new technologies. For this reason, paper based communications and demands for actions will exist for many years to come.

2Simple communications with properly tested education modules will be the key to this need. As long as the work is properly thought out, this will deliver a streamlined service to the members and save considerable HR time. The nay-sayers will point to potential misunderstandings arising out on non-direct communications, but these should be anticipated and ironed-out by the pre-production phases of the development work.

3As members expect and demand better and better levels of service, their needs should be met by excellent communications and a delivery proposition fuelled by business process efficiencies. The upshot should be that administration, HR, payroll teams, etc. should be allowed to focus on their key deliverables, rather than being distracted by issues better sourced elsewhere. The interfaces between these departments must also be first class to enable a superior service to be delivered.
Members should also be aware of and understand where the line must be drawn between advice and information. As pensions are complicated instruments, all too often members can associate poor service with lack of advice from TPAs as most members have a desire to be told what to do rather than asked what direction they wish to take.
The desire to provide the right level of service can cause blurring of this advice/information line and lead to risk not only for TPAs and trustees but for members too.

4SLAs in their traditional sense can be rather misleading and irrelevant. Pension schemes are put in place for the benefit of their members and members do not really seem to care about general service levels as they only care about finished, paid benefits or quickly answered questions. TPAs should therefore spend more time and effort in managing member expectations and member satisfaction.
From a trustee perspective, trustees want a well-run scheme with no member complaints and complete satisfaction. The most important measures for a TPA therefore surround cash management, cost management, quality, accuracy, member experience and member satisfaction and these can be demonstrated as follows:
• Cash management – ensuring investments are made accurately and expediently;
• Cost management – ensuring processes are continual improved to ensure speed and cost effectiveness of service;
• Quality – consistency of quality with as few mistakes as possible;
• Member experience – how long it takes from the time a member asks a question to the time the member receives a quality response;
• Member satisfaction – through continual member feedback on the service attributes – what worked well and what did not.


MARK WILLIS
1Client requirements in this area will develop substantially over the next few years. We are already discussing with clients, at a high level, how meaningful management information can be depicted online. Lines of thought are drifting towards dashboard techniques and using various indicators to assess the health of the arrangement in question, the risks it faces, the company/trustee experience of “doing business” with MNPA, and the member experience.
Similarly we are also seeing demand for a rationalisation of scheme documentation with a view to creating a trustee-focused web offer that will act as an electronic repository for the latest scheme information as well as archiving important historical documents.

2The key is prompt and easily understood information being fed to new starters as soon as possible. Early engagement of this population can take various forms, the ideal is for the new entrant’s “offer pack” to contain links to client websites that house generic scheme information and user friendly modelers (whether financial and/or risk based). This has the advantage of raising the profile of the scheme, and gives the new entrant chance to pre-register his/her DC choices (contributions/investments), prior to actual start date.

3Customer care can take many different guises. Members are currently focused on receiving information that is accurate and timely. This will change in future as customer service develops across the financial services sector. For example did the member understand the information provided first time, was it clear, did they have to request further information to facilitate a decision? Was their total experience a positive one?
Similarly we are expecting clients/trustees to move in the same direction, hard delivery areas will remain, such as SLAs and productivity of the admin team in question. But some of the soft areas are also starting to emerge, e.g. what is the client’s and trustee’s suppliers experience of the administration service, what members feel (member surveys), what reputation does the administration supplier have in the marketplace.

4Administration is a process-orientated environment, and every process at some point in time requires human intervention. It is therefore impossible for TPAs to guarantee 100pc SLAs all the time.
However, what clients should demand in terms of SLA measures is that the TPA can easily report on the oldest SLA, the age profile of the SLAs, e.g. by how many days were the SLAs missed and the reason the SLAs were missed. Were they missed due to an internal TPA failure or can the “misses” be attributable to third parties or other external circumstances?