Date posted: 01/11/2010
Audience: HR Managers and teams who have responsibility for payroll contracts and annual benefit statements
Action:
- If they have not already done so, your Pension Service Centre (PSC) will contact you by 30 November to agree a timetable for production of benefit statements for nuvos members and members who have bought added pension
- If your PSC advises you that there are problems with the data you are sending over your payroll interface, make provision to correct the problem with your payroll provider
- After liaising with your PSC, you may also wish to inform affected members about the timetable for production of their statements
Timing: Immediate
Detail
- This Notice updates the current position around the production of annual benefit statements for nuvos members and members with added pension as explained in EPN262. You will recall that we told you that where your payroll has made an attempt to adjust earnings data through the payroll interface for a closed end of year nuvos account, mismatches will occur in the member’s record which will stop the creation of an accurate benefit statement.
- EPN262 also asked you to remind your payroll provider that when supplying information in a payroll interface to your PSC, no attempt should be made to adjust a closed year’s earnings data for nuvos members or those purchasing added pension. Pensionable earnings should reflect the actual pensionable earnings at the date the payment was made and not at the date earned, for example, following a retrospective pay award.
- We have been working with our software supplier to provide PSCs with software to identify affected records, as well as retrieving payroll files for previous years. This has taken a considerable amount of time as initial sampling uncovered a range of data issues with payroll data for nuvos members across a large number of employers. The software has now been made available to your PSC and they are running it to identify all affected records.
- There are three likely scenarios: a) Your payroll data for nuvos members is clean b) Your payroll data for nuvos members is predominantly clean and it will not take long to correct records before benefit statements can be produced c) Your payroll data has significant errors and it will take some time to correct records before benefit statements can be produced.
- Your PSC will inform you of which scenario applies to you and a likely timetable for production of nuvos benefit statements. Please note that they will have to schedule this work around other business. If scenarios b and c apply your PSC will be able to advise you of any corrective action you or your payroll providers will need to take to ensure these problems do not reoccur.
- Please also note that we have amended other software and processes to be able to identify such problems with your data earlier should such problems reoccur, but PSCs will not be able to guarantee timely nuvos benefit statements in future years if data quality continues to be poor.
- Although these issues have affected bulk processes to produce accurate benefit statements, this does not mean that pension awards or early exit payments for individual nuvos members have been processed incorrectly. Checks are in place to cleanse individual member records before awards are made.
- Whilst there is significant work to be done, MyCSP will work with you to produce nuvos benefit statements as quickly as possible and to help you eliminate problems in future.
Contacts
Enquiries about content, distribution or to receive in a different format
employerhelpdesk@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
01256 846414
