British teachers' pensions set to be released from Capita's grasp after nearly 30 years The UK's Department for Education is to retender the outsourcing contract for teachers' pensions in a deal worth £185m to replace a relationship with Capita that has lasted 25 years. According to a tender notice published late last week, Whitehall is on the hunt for a new contractor to run the Teachers' Pension Scheme (TPS). …
Because Capita is being audited for "financial irregularities" with regards to the entire pension fund.
Taking bets on what % of it they've stolen and hidden away......and how many low-level employees they'll try to scapegoat.
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Probably unlikely. It takes many years to build up knowledge of the 'intricacies' of the UK system.
I used to work in pensions admin software and when I left the unique key on the pensioners database table had grown to (full_name, DOB, NI_number, place_of_birth). NI numbers are supposed to be unique, but there are thousands of duplicates. You do get people with the same (full_name, DOB, place_of_birth), (full_name, NI_number, place_of_birth) etc. We had to add fields to the unique key over time as we discovered more mistakes in the NI number issuing system.
NINOs have never been unique. No one should ever think they are or were. At one point there were three offices issuing NINOs, guess what happened. Even now, a new NINO is not always unique and they are being issued from one source. Go figure.
If you want unique, how about having a pension scheme number?
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Half of people aged 75 and over don't regularly use the Internet.
Not that they'll get many complaints. That form will be online too.
My 86 year old grandad wanted to pay his tax bill online, try to login to govt gateway, turns out whoever created the login didn;t write down the password, try to reset - needs an authentication app, ok download it....except it wants you to login first....
Try to create new account - asks for valid passport, NI driving licence and one other piece of data he did have, passport out of date and doesn't live in NI so no NI driving licence, try gov.uk verify again can't locate enough data (no valid passport, no mobile contract etc etc)
Solution....write a cheque....
HMRC helpline can't get you into the online system despite them verifying your ID on the phone...even my bank can remote reset my password over the phone...absolutely useless....
It is about time pension contributors or pensioners had a proper say in how their funds are managed. The old company pension schemes are now run by profitmaking insurance or investment companies for their own benefit and the government schemes are no better.
The only thing people can do now is withdraw or transfer funds and pay huge hidden charges for the "service".
Oh yes, let's do that , can you back date the pay rises I didn't get 'because you get a public sector pension'.? After all, not really fair that all those lawyers, accounts, double glazing and timeshare salesmen should miss out on a lucrative opportunity to rip off hospital porters and school teachers....
How on earth does rolling out a standardised pension toolbox, that is probably used for tens if not hundreds of other customers come to £185M?
There are off the shelf solutions available for all manner of financial services, and in our experience, they practically will give them to you for nothing because they make far more off taking cuts of investment fund management. Especially when it's a large fund with lots of participants. Being charged on both the operation AND the investment fund is atrocious!
In hindsight, signing 25 year tie-ins for just about any service provision is probably a bad idea in most forms of procurement.
Like a lot of things, I'd prefer the option to choose myself where it goes; but many employee schemes don't really allow for that for the duration of your employment. Nor is making informed financial choices yourself particularly a widespread skill!
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