The world of pensions is becoming ever more complex, with pension schemes demanding more detailed information, more quickly than ever before. Getting things wrong or missing deadlines is not only time-consuming to correct but could incur costly penalties from the scheme and The Pension Regulator.
The move to Monthly Data Reconciliation is upon us.
Teachers’ Pensions are moving to Monthly Data Reconciliation (MCR) returns, with all schools requiring to be live on MCR by the end of April 2022. This new process combines the Monthly Contribution Breakdown/ Contribution Slip (MCB) and Monthly Data Collection (MDC) into a single return.
Throughout the development of MCR, Dataplan has been fully engaged with The Teachers’ Pension and others, helping develop the MCR template and associated processes. Since the original MCR pilot, in July 2020, Dataplan has transitioned over 50% of our schools onto MCR. We have plans already in place for onboarding the remainder before TP’s deadline next year.
The benefits of a specialist education pension service
One of the benefits of having a team of specialist Education pension experts is that in addition to taking care of all of your auto enrolment needs, they are also able to provide additional services, including: we take care of all of the following on your behalf:
- Generate, check, validate and submit the MCR return.
- Make payment to Teachers’ Pensions.
- Generate and submit the End of Year Certificate (EOYC) for review by your auditors and managing with any resulting queries and actions.
As far as teachers, the school and the Trust are concerned, if you are not already on MCR when you join Dataplan, the transition from MCB/MDC to MCR will be seamless, and that’s a big headache taken care of!
A fully managed LGPS pension service
In addition to the above, we also provide you with a fully managed pension service for LGPS.
- Acting as your agent with the fund.
- Generate and submit starters, contract changes and leaver notifications – if required by the Fund.
- Generate, check, validate and submit monthly or annual returns.
- Make payment to each LGPS Fund.
- Deal with any resulting queries and actions from you, your auditors and the LGPS scheme.
With school clients spanning the UK and all LA areas, we have experience working with all Local Government Pensions as well as other Public Sector Pensions including the Fire Service and NHS pensions and of course the many other ‘household’ pension scheme providers like NEST, The Peoples’ Pension, Scottish Widows, Standard Life, Aviva, etc.
If you are worried about your school’s migration to MCR, or if your payroll provider doesn’t seem to have the necessary experience and processes in place, we would be happy to discuss your options.