Background

The accuracy of membership data for Trustees has become an area where Trustees need to devote more time and energy due to the requirements of the Pensions Regulator (tPR) and their sponsoring employer.

The Regulator published in June 2010 how it intends to Regulate Trustees on their Record Keeping responsibilities in the future. It has indicated that it expects Trustees to achieve a satisfactory 'score' on what it has defined as Common data by 2012. If the Trustees data is not complete, tPR will expect the Trustees to implement a plan to improve the quality of their data.

Sponsoring employers would expect the Trustees to hold up to date accurate records of their numbers as this could have an impact on the size of the liabilities together with the ability to manage or reduce these against the company's balance sheet.


Our Service

Health Claims Bureau (HCB) has developed a cost effective service that will assist Trustees in ensuring that they keep their membership data up to date. The objective of our service is to help Trustees:

   ·            Verify the continued existence of pensioners to avoid the continued payment of
             benefits after the member has died, and
   ·            Establish the whereabouts and status of deferred members where their existing data
             is no longer accurate.

The implementation of our service will enable the Trustees to:

   ·            Meet tPR's requirements that Trustees make all reasonable efforts to update and
             ensure accuracy of their data
   ·            Trace Members living outside the United Kingdom
   ·            Ensure that members are still alive
   ·            Enable the trustees to be certain that the payment of pensions is to intended
             beneficiary of the scheme
   ·            To enable the Trustees to obtain competitive pricing where a buy-out of liabilities is
             being considered
   ·            Assist Trustees in liability risk reduction exercises


Our Process

We have developed a tiered approach to the checking of existence of pensioners and the whereabouts of deferred pensioners.

Initially we agree the scope of the project, reporting requirements, authorisation procedures and data specification. Once all the above have been agreed and the data has been provided and formatted by us, we take the following actions:

    Pensioners:

     Stage One: Data Matching is undertaken in conjunction with our data matching
     business partner. This will enable us to quickly identify pensioners that have changed
     address or further investigation is required.

     Stage Two: All pensioners are checked against death registers in the UK and Ireland,
     if a positive match is obtain this immediately notified to enable the pension payment
     to be suspended.

     Stage Three: Letters are sent to pensioners where the data matching responses are
     returned 'negative'. Responses are individually monitored, and forwarding, or other
     information gained that produces confirmation of new address or whereabouts of the
     pensioner is passed to the Trustees.

     Stage Four: The final level of existence checking involves desk based research,
     which is essentially internet searches by trained researchers, followed up by written,
     e-mailed and/or telephone approaches to confirm information gathered.

    Deferred Pensioners:

     Stage One: Data matching - this is provided in conjunction with our data matching
     business partner.

     Stage Two: Desk based research/Written and/or Telephone approach (using a script
     agreed in advance). Our staff are fully trained and experienced in dealing with often
     elderly and/or vulnerable people. Is this expertise relevant to deferreds?

     Stage Three: Where further investigation is required, either because the first two
     stages have not produced results or there is suspicion of fraudulent behaviour, our
     nationally networked field visitors can be used to trace or validate the existence of
     members.is there a likelihood of this type of behaviour in the deferred population?


Why appoint HCB

HCB has been providing services to the financial services industry since 1984, offering a wide range of products mainly to Insurance institutions. Whilst for many years this has involved verifying data, tracing and investigating disability claims for major insurance companies, more recently this has expanded into the verification/confirmation of accurate pension member data.

We believe we can offer Trustees a cost effective means of verifying the continued existence of pensioners and deferred pensioners. HCB also recognises the difficulty of dealing with the inevitable "Gone-Aways" resulting from traditionally sought 'certificates of existence'. We provide an end to end service where these much more difficult cases are investigated as thoroughly as possible, in an efficient and cost effective manner.


Who are HCB

HCB was established in 1984 and consolidated into the existing Group of Companies in 1993. The Group provides claim visiting and claim assessment services to insurers, ill health retirement assessment services and absence management services.

HCB's offices are situated within a gated perimeter fence which is locked when the building is unoccupied. The office building is protected by an alarm system linked to the Police. All paper records are stored in fire resistant cabinets which are locked when the building is not occupied. Keys are stored in a password protected key safe.