The day-to-day running of a pension scheme throws up many challenges for trustees and employers. Punter Southall has been delivering pensions administration and scheme accounting services as a seamless part of its overall service since inception.

Within the administration business we have over 100 employees with administration teams located in London, Guildford, Wokingham, Bristol, Birmingham and Edinburgh. We believe that there are 3 key elements required for the delivery of high quality successful pensions administration which are:

Capable Administrators

Despite 'pensions simplification' pension legislation remains complex and we recognise the need to recruit and retain career minded individuals who can demonstrate the required combination of numeracy and literacy skills combined with an ability to communicate at all levels. The majority of our administrators are graduates.

Over two-thirds of our administration employees are either qualified or studying for PMI qualifications. Training has always been part of the ethos of Punter Southall and therefore we decided to seek accreditation with Investors in People (IIP) which we achieved in September 1997 and passed our last triennial assessment in 2006.

Excellent IT Systems


We design, develop and maintain virtually all our software systems in house, only very occasionally buying in external specialist software. We have a dedicated in-house team of 25 specialist pensions IT professionals who look after our systems.

We have always believed that making significant investments in our IT systems is crucial to being able to deliver excellent services to our clients. We have therefore invested a significant amount in the last four years and expect to continue to do so over the next two years.

Electronic document and task management

During 2006 and 2007 we have installed the Electronic Content Management (ECM) system (FileNet) which is the current market leading ECM application. Thus all correspondence for our clients will be scanned and available for searching and retrieval. This system is now operational in four of our offices and is presently in the process of being installed in our Wokingham office, with Birmingham to follow shortly. Integrated into this system is a workflow process which in conjunction with our time recording system, Virtual office, enables client managers to monitor closely the turnaround times on individual pieces of work, the total amount of outstanding work and where any particular job is at any moment in time. Punter Southall has also developed advanced reporting tools that extract detailed information from the work tracking system.

Administration database

Our administration system, PenScope, has been developed in-house specifically to facilitate the administration of defined benefit and defined contribution pension arrangements. Coding has been written around web-based technologies which have the advantage of offering an extremely secure environment in which to handle sensitive information. This approach means that Punter Southall, and in particular the administration teams, drive the system's development internally leading to timely and appropriate modifications without the delays endemic to our industry.

Key features include:

For more information and to see a fully working demonstration of our system’s online capabilities please click here.

Robust Procedures

Our working procedures are efficient, meet all professional guidance and recognise other areas of best practice. The way we manage our resources and deliver our services is supported by our approach to quality control and workflow management. We have formal, documented, quality control procedures in place for all our major activities. We operate within a framework of mandatory verification procedures for administration calculations which aim to avoid any calculation errors.


Assurance Report on Internal Controls
To download Punter Southall's Pension Administration Assurance Report on Internal Controls (AAF 01/06) please click here.