The underlying data must be 100% correct
The move to the Wtp has put data quality high on the agenda of pension funds. Before a fund transfers existing pension rights into the new system, it needs to be clear that the underlying administration is accurate and complete. In the end, every member must receive what they’re entitled to. In the new system, every member also has their own pension pot. That makes it important to process future contributions and returns correctly and on time (late crediting costs a lot of money). Members also get more insight and more options to make choices, and funds need to guide them in those choices. Making the right choices and giving the right guidance only works if the data behind your services is always fully correct.
Keep control of your pension data
That’s a challenge for many pension funds. Many funds have outsourced their administration to a pension administrator. As a fund’s board, how do you know whether the administration is really in order? Do you have enough insight yourself? Can you access your data when you need it? And can you respond quickly to change? Outsourcing requires openness, but in practice that isn’t always there. That’s tricky, because the pension fund remains responsible at board level, even when it has outsourced its administration.
With the Wtp in particular, it matters that your fund is in control of its own data, without depending on your pension administrator. That’s where we help. Our services give your fund independent insight into the quality of its administration. New technology offers more and more options here. We use AI, for example, to analyse large volumes of data and uncover patterns. We archive, investigate, check and validate pension data. Do we spot anything unusual? Then we discuss it with the administrator. Sometimes there’s a plausible explanation, sometimes action is needed. We record everything, and the outcomes are also available to accountants and auditors, for example. With this quality cycle in place, a board doesn’t just know that things are going well: it can also prove it. That’s how you really stay in control of your data.
From ‘get clean’ to ‘stay clean’
The Wtp has prompted many funds to thoroughly clean up and check their administration. But a one-off clean-up isn’t enough. That’s why the focus is moving from get clean to stay clean: not establishing once that the data is correct, but checking continuously that it still is.
Something in a person’s life is always changing. Members change employers, work more or fewer hours, marry, divorce, become unable to work, move house or die. All these events can affect the pension administration. If a member wants insight into their own pension situation, the pension calculations need to reflect all of those events. To make that happen, we connect and compare different data sources, such as the UWV (the Dutch employee insurance agency) and the Personal Records Database (BRP). Combining data on incapacity for work, personal details and payroll returns lets us spot discrepancies that aren’t immediately visible within a single system.
We also use AI to check mandatory participation, for example: are the employees who are required to join a specific industry-wide pension fund actually enrolled, and are they paying contributions? By doing this continuously, we keep funds clean.
Good data enables better guidance
After the Wtp comes into effect, the focus is moving more and more from informing members to engaging and guiding them. That requires data that’s both reliable and usable. If you know better who a member is and what information they need, you tailor your communication and guidance to match. A member who’s about to retire has different questions from someone who’s just started work. Someone working in construction may have different information needs from a GP. As a fund, you need to take that into account to give members the right, relevant information at the right moment.
If your data isn’t correct, your communication and guidance miss the mark. The right approach, based on the right data, is also what you need to show the AFM (the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets) that your fund’s communication and choice guidance achieve their goals. That’s why we make sure the data is correct.
Control of data makes a pension fund more agile
Agility in data matters for other reasons too. The pension market is changing: administrators are stopping, administrations are moving and funds are consolidating. You want to move flexibly with your data when that happens. At the same time, funds increasingly want to choose the best party for each part of their operations. As a fund, you don’t want to be held back because your data is hard to access or only usable within one administrator’s systems.
Free and timely access to your own data is an important condition for making your own choices and responding quickly to change. We provide that access, and with it the operational agility you need to act independently.
Data, IT and communication come together
Data is the foundation for all your services, and for compliance with the Wtp. At Yellowtail, we look even further. By bringing pension data, IT, communication and governance together, we offer a combination that makes funds strong and agile. So they make sure every member gets what they’re entitled to, along with the information and guidance to make choices for the pension they want for themselves.
