Venue: Committee Room 6, Guildhall, Swansea. View directions
Contact: Democratic Services: - 636923
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Disclosures of Personal and Prejudicial Interests. Minutes: In accordance with the Code of Conduct adopted by the City and County of Swansea, the following interests were declared: - I Guy – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. Councillor A Lockyer – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. My wife and son are also Members of the Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. D Mackerras – Agenda as a whole - Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. Councillor T M White – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme and my daughter is a Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. Officers: K Cobb - Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government
Pension Scheme – personal. J Dong – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. C Isaac – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme – personal. J Parkhouse – Agenda as a whole – Member of Local Government Pension Scheme and Minute No.6 – Draft Statement of Accounts 2018/19 – Clerk of Llanrhidian Higher Community Council – personal. |
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Minutes: Resolved that the Minutes of the Local Pension Board meeting held on 25 July 2019 be signed and approved as a correct record. Noted – The Chair referred to the recent LAPF Investment Awards
where the Pension Fund won the best Local Government Scheme in the UK for Best Approach to Sustainable Investing. The award follows the work to reduce the carbon
footprint of the Fund by cutting the amount of cash invested in companies with
high carbon intensity. |
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Presentation - Extinction Rebellion. Minutes: The Chair explained that the Extinction Rebellion Disinvestment Team were not available for the meeting. Resolved that the item be deferred to the next scheduled meeting on 12 December 2019. |
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Minutes: David Williams, Wales Audit Office (WAO) presented the ISA
260 Report which set out for consideration the matters
arising from the audit of the financial statements of the Pension Fund for
2018-19 that required reporting under ISA 260. WAO commended the Authority’s Finance Team and received the
draft financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2019 on 21 May 2019,
which was prior to the agreed deadline of 3 June 2019. It was added that the Auditor General intended to issue an unqualified audit report on the financial statements once the Authority had provided a Letter of Representation based on that set out in Appendix 1. The proposed audit report was set out at Appendix 2. It was explained that there were no misstatements identified in the financial statements, which remained uncorrected. The misstatements corrected by management were attached at Appendix 3. Reference was also made to Note 18 – Statement of the Actuary which had been amended to include disclosures relating to two recent legal judgements. The Auditors had no concerns about qualitative aspects of accounting practices and financial reporting, did not encounter any significant difficulties during the audit, had no significant matters to report that had been discussed and corresponded upon with management, had no other matters significant to the oversight of the financial reporting process that required reporting, did not identify any material weaknesses in internal controls and had no other issues to report. The recommendations arising from the financial audit were provided in Appendix 4. Management had responded to them and progress would be monitored during the 2019-20 audit. They highlighted that controls over the year end reconciliations between pension and payroll systems could be further improved. The Board discussed scheduled bodies, particularly i-connect member returns, the quality of data, lack of resources of smaller bodies, need to report accurately and the implications of the McCloud / Guaranteed Minimum Pensions (GMP) judgments. The Chair thanked the WAO Representative for providing the report and thanked the Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer and Senior Accountant for their work and that of the Finance staff on the accounts. Resolved that the report be noted. |
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Minutes: David Williams, Wales Audit Office (WAO) presented the Audit
Enquiries to Those Charged with Governance and Management letter to the Section
151 Officer. The letter requested the views
of the Authority on specific areas of governance to assist the WAO in
understanding the Pension Fund and its business processes in support of their
work in providing an audit opinion on the 2018-19 financial statements. The responses provided by the Authority for 2017-18 were also provided and an update on the arrangements for
2018-19 requested. Resolved that the contents of the letter be noted. |
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Statement of Accounts 2018/19 - City and County of Swansea Pension Fund. PDF 214 KB Additional documents: Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented ‘for information’ the Statement of Accounts for the City and County
of Swansea Pension Fund 2018/19 which had been
approved by the Pension Fund Committee on 12 September 2019. It was added that the Pension Fund
Committee had been given delegated authority to approve the Pension Fund
Statement of Accounts and the Local Pension Board had previously received and
discussed the Draft Statement of Accounts. The Wales Audit Office (WAO) had completed their audit of the Pension Fund Statement of Accounts 2018/19 in line with their audit plan presented to the Local Pension Board earlier in the year. The Pension Fund Statement of Accounts 2018/19 were provided at Appendix 1. |
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AVC's Equitable Life Buyout. PDF 240 KB Additional documents: Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented a ‘for information’ report which informed the Board on the pending
transfer of legacy AVC assets managed by Equitable Life to Utmost Life and Pension
(formerly Reliance Life) and ongoing communication with affected members. It was explained that Equitable Life were appointed AVC
providers from 1992-2001 and there were currently 78 (active and deferred) City
and County of Swansea Pension Fund members with policies totalling £238,000 as
at 31 March 2019. 19
pensioners currently had policies in payment.
Equitable Life was transferring of all its remaining business to Utmost
Life and Pension (formerly Reliance Life). Affected members had been contacted by Equitable Life directly and The Administering
Authority also wrote out to affected members outlining the proposals and
highlighting some of the risks, decisions and considerations. This was provided at
Appendix 1. Administering
Authorities, as scheme policy holders, had also been asked to approve the ‘Scheme’ and to ‘Change
the Articles’ to make Utmost Life and Pension (formerly Reliance Life) the sole
Member of Equitable and were able to object to the transfer of Equitable Life’s
business to Utmost Life and Pensions. The Board
discussed the potentially very attractive uplift, the correspondence sent to
members advising them fully on the implications of the change, the decision-making
process and responses received from members. |
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Competition and Markets Authority Reporting. PDF 293 KB Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented a ‘for information’ report which updated the
Board on pending requirements to set measurable objectives for appointed
investment consultants. The report provided the requirements, the importance of
objectives, establishing objectives for consultants, measuring success in
practice and reporting compliance. It was added that the Pension
Scheme Trustees should establish objectives for their consultants no later than
10 December 2019. The Deputy Chief
Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer would develop draft objectives for the
appointed investment consultants and report these to the Pension Fund Committee
meeting in November. The Chair commented that the idea was excellent and he awaited a further update to the Board. |
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Altair Administration System. PDF 163 KB Additional documents: Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented a ‘for information’ report which noted the
transition of the Aquila Heywood Altair Pension Administration system from a
server based system to a cloud based hosted system. It was outlined that Aquila Heywood’s Altair LGPS Software system had been used by The City & County of Swansea Pension Fund since 2010. The Altair LGPS software system was used by over 90% LGPS funds in the UK. Currently there are 2 other known suppliers with only a handful of clients each. The current adopted use of the software package was via a traditional physical load of the software and data on physical servers located on a Swansea Council site. It was the responsibility of the administration authority (Swansea Council) to maintain and ensure operation of the system and test and implement all new upgrades/patches as required. The current version of Altair required an upgrade in the next 6 months, which would require the upgrade and transfer to a new server and Wales Audit Office had identified the need for server upgrade as a systemic risk. Swansea Council was also currently undertaking a corporate review of how it delivered its major ICT services to its clients and was due to receive a report in September 2019 recommending its Oracle system be migrated from the current server based model to a hosted cloud based solution. Aquila Heywood had submitted a business case proposal
and migration plan, provided at Appendix 1, to migrate the current server based
software to a fully cloud based hosted system of the software, incorporating
the new v10 upgrade. The benefits and
potential costs of migrating were fully outlined. The Board requested further details of the additional
technical advice provided to the Pension Fund Committee in this respect. Resolved that further details of the technical advice provided be circulated to the Board. |
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Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented a ‘for information’ report which presented
any breaches which had occurred in the period in accordance with the Reporting
Breaches Policy. Appendix A provided the details of breaches that had occurred since the previous Pension Fund Committee in July 2019. The details of the breaches and the actions taken by Management were highlighted. |
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Exclusion of the Public. PDF 237 KB Minutes: The Board was requested to exclude the
public from the meeting during consideration of the item(s) of business
identified in the recommendation(s) to the report on the grounds that it / they
involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as set out in the
exclusion paragraph of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, as
amended by the Local Government (Access to Information) (Variation) (Wales)
Order 2007 relevant to the item(s) of business set out in the report. The Board considered the Public Interest Test in deciding
whether to exclude the public from the meeting for the items of business where
the Public Interest Test was relevant as set out in the report. Resolved that the
public be excluded for the following items of
business. (Closed Session) |
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Wales Pension Partnership - Update. Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer
presented a ‘for information’ report which updated the
Board on the progress of the Wales Pension Partnership (WPP) asset pooling. Appendix 1 provided
the progress and update report provided by the ACS Operator Link Asset
Services. Referenced within
the update was the projected transition of the tranche 3
fixed income fund by the FCA in Q4 2019.
In addition, the Officer Working Group had formed a sub-group made up of
practitioners to progress tranche 4 – private markets. The Board discussed future training requirements and the transfer of assets into the WPP. |
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Report of the Investment Consultant. Minutes: The Deputy Chief Finance Officer / Deputy S151 Officer presented
a ‘for information’ report on behalf of Hymans Robertson, which presented the
Quarter 2 2019 Investment Monitoring Report. The content of the report was noted by the Board and various questions were asked, which were responded to accordingly. |