Employers go digital to process pensions returns for thousands of employees

MHR Analytics, the specialist provider of business analytics and financial performance management, extended its data and reporting solutions to launch the Pensions Data Service in late 2018.

Now, with 30 customers on board committed to more than 200 schemes in less than 12 months, the company expects to assist at least 50 organisations with automated pensions data submissions by December 2019.

MHR Analytics’ pensions data service simplifies monthly data submissions to pension schemes, relieves pressure on stretched resource, and reduces risk, cost and inaccuracies.

Customers cover an employee base of around 125,000 and include Cardiff Metropolitan University, Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council, Kier and Liberata on behalf of police forces and local authorities.

Nick Felton, Senior Vice President of MHR Analytics, said: “With many public sector organisations making significant progress in their digital transformation initiatives, this service fits the bill perfectly.”

“A number of education bodies, central government departments, housing associations and train operating companies have taken up the new service to support LGPS (Local Government Pension Scheme), MDC (Monthly Data Collection) and Teachers Returns requirements,” he said. “The service supports Aviva, People’s Pension, Legal & General and RPMI, and we will also be able to support organisations in Scotland with specific returns complexities, for example SPPA.”

“All payroll functions processing these returns manually benefit from more accurate and timely returns. The service mitigates risk and fines that can result from single manual errors. The service removes a significant amount of the resource needed to process tens of thousands of employees’ pension returns, whilst improving efficiencies and saving public money.”

MHR Analytics also partnered with i-Connect (part of Aquila Heywood), the pension fund data management provider, to help simplify the LGPS submissions process, particularly for public sector pensions.

Colin Lewis, Managing Director of i-Connect, said: “We worked closely with MHR Analytics to help extend this innovative, pain-free data submission solution service. The software is about exchanging data between payroll and pension forms and getting data from one place to another – which should be simple but it’s not, so it’s no surprise that the service has proved so popular so quickly.”

“If you’re not using any sort of software or data automation, then it’s a manual process where payroll professionals are filling in papers or spreadsheets to get data from one place to another,” he said. “The automated process improves operational efficiencies, reduces the risk of financial penalties, increases speed, and reduces costs – making sense for everyone.”