Margaret Snowdon, Chair of PASA, commented: “With the deadlines for GDPR compliance and GMP reconciliation looming, the security and accuracy of all data being held is a top concern for schemes. PASA takes its role in sharing the best practice and expertise, which enables people to manage these issues efficiently, very seriously and collaborating with industry experts like ITM means we can continually expand our insight and remain at the forefront of developments impacting administration practice.

The Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) was created to provide an independent infrastructure which will set, develop, guide and assess administration standards.

PASA will act as a focal point and engage with industry and government to create protocols for understanding good administration – but also appreciates there is no one size that fits all. PASA will develop evidential accreditation practices which will allow benchmarking across and between the industry regardless of how the administration is being delivered.

As well as raising the profile of pension administration generally, PASA will focus on three core activities.

1. Defining good standards of pensions administration relevant to all providers, whether in-house, third party or insurers

2. Publishing guidance to support those standards

3. Being an independent accreditation body, assessing the achievement of good standards by schemes (regardless of provider)

There is no organisation providing such services across schemes, yet there is a demand for evidence of service quality from scheme trustees, sponsors, administrators, insurers, scheme members and regulators.

ITM is a leading provider of specialist data management, systems and administrator support services within UK financial services.

ITM consultants are all experienced pension administration system and data specialists, able to provide advice and guidance to sponsoring employers, trustees and scheme managers on how to identify, manage and correct all system, process and benefit data issues. ITM consultants have extensive knowledge of:

• Data risk auditing, cleansing and data migration.
• Large scale legacy data and benefit calculation projects.
• Strategic pension administration operational review and outsourcing advice.
• Pension administration operational processes.
• All leading pension and financial services administration software packages.
• Bespoke pension administration systems build and implementation management.

ITM provides these services to a range of clients that include:

• Trustees and independent trustees of occupational pension plans.
• Third party and in house administrators.
• Benefit consultants and actuaries.
• HR, payroll and flexible benefit providers.
• Insurance companies.
• Financial advisers and wealth managers.

Pensions administration solution.

Web based data analysis and reporting solution.

Auto enrolment solution.

Web based member and client access solution.

Web based legacy data storage solution

Guy Ridley: guyridley@itm.co.uk | www.itm.co.uk