The Pensions Board meeting on 10 September 2024 was scheduled to include discussions on the work undertaken by the Pensions Committee since April 2024, as well as updates on various projects and work being carried out by the Pensions Team.

Review of Pensions Committee Work (Public Papers)

This report, which was prepared for the meeting, aimed to provide the Pensions Board with an overview of the Pensions Committee's activities between April and August 2024. The report highlighted several significant topics considered by the Pensions Committee during this period, including the adoption of an Exit Credit Policy, updates from the Responsible Investment Working Group, and the implementation of a Fixed Income Review focusing on CTI Bonds.

The key item particularly relevant to the Board was the Exit Credit Policy Policy. In addition to these public reports above, The Committee also took questions from the union, Hackney Unison and heard two separate deputations from the Hackney Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and from the Hackney Friends of Israel. (5. PB September 2024 - Review of Pensions Committee Work Public Papers, page 3)

The report also noted that the Pensions Committee received a Quarterly Update Report and a High Level Monitoring Report covering the period up to the end of March 2024. These reports provided information on various aspects of the Pension Fund, such as governance, funding level, investment performance, responsible investment, pensions administration, and communications.

Projects and Work Updates

The Pensions Board was also scheduled to receive an update on the progress of several ongoing projects:

• Recruitment and resourcing: The meeting was due to be informed that a new permanent Head of Pensions, Miriam Adams, would be starting on 16 September 2024.
• Pensions Dashboards: The report for the meeting stated that the Council's pensions administrators, Equiniti, were working to connect to the Pensions Dashboard by the October 2025 guidance staging date. The report also noted that there were concerns about whether the software upgrade that would be required to enable the connection to the Pensions Database should take place.
• Business Planning: This section of the report provided an update on the process of updating the Pension Fund’s business plan, a draft of which was due to be presented to the November Pensions Committee.
• TPR General Code: The Pensions Board was to be informed that a project had been started to ensure that the Fund would comply with the Pensions Regulator’s new General Code of Practice for Pension Funds.
• Stewardship Code: This section of the report for the meeting noted that work was underway on a submission to the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) to allow the Fund to become a signatory of the UK Stewardship Code. The draft submission was due to be presented to the Fund’s Responsible Investment Working Group (RIWG) at its meeting on 11th September.
• Annual Benefits Statements (ABS): The report for the meeting explained that the deadline for providing Annual Benefits Statements (ABS) to members was 31 August each year, and that an error in the production of the statements meant that this deadline would not be met. The report noted that the issue, which related to a corrupted data field, was identified by a member of the in-house admin team. The issue had been resolved by 29 August and the outstanding ABS were expected to be with members by 12 September.