Communications Best Practice

[chrishoggart]

Had an interesting discussion on pensions communication best practice during the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) Member Forum meeting yesterday (3/5/22). The PPF aspire to achieve communications best practice through a number of channels as follows:

  they benchmark their performance as a pension fund though a “provider of comparative analysis” for the pension’s industry known as CEM (https://www.cembenchmarking.com/)

• they also internally measure customer satisfaction
• they are a member of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) where they have won its prestigious ServiceMark accreditation for delivering exceptional levels of customer service to its members.

   they also get a lot of ideas and information from being members of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS)

• they frequently engage in peer conversations often, though not exclusively, through the ICS (e.g., they visited First Direct bank to see how they do things)
• they have an extremely accessible and useful website
• they have a Member Forum which has regular timetabled meetings

 
Additionally:

  one of their directors mentioned a company called quietroom (https://quietroom.co.uk/), a specialist communications company that work with a number of pension providers as being a possible route to achieving customer service excellence

• the Audit and Assurance Faculty (AAF) was also mentioned as a means of ensuring that customer service performance was up to scratch. The Pensions Regulator (TPR) use this facility to assess whether trustees on their Trustee Register have ‘sound administration and accounting procedures’. TPR developed this assurance reporting framework with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW). Details here: https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/trustees/independent-trustee-register/joining-the-trustee-register/assurance-reporting-framework-#899ad7eaed2941d3b6bb195e28ba9549

 
For those in HPS2, it would be interesting to know how the pension scheme and its trustees match up to all (or any) of the above elements.