Issue - meetings

With reference to article 9 of the minute of its previous meeting, the Committee had before it a report by the Director of Resources which provided an update on any changes to the North East Scotland Pension Fund and the Aberdeen City Council Transport Fund strategies.

The report provided an update on Pension Fund Annual Benefit Statements; documents which had been recently updated, namely (a) the Statement of Investment Principles, (b) the Data Protection Policy, (c) the Reporting Breaches of Law Policy, (d) the Personal Data Breaches Procedure Notes for staff; and the Risk Register and new Risk Management Policy; information in respect of upcoming overseas travel to be approved by Committee; the engagement undertaken by the Pension Regulator in respect of current governance and administration standards and practices; the final report from the Pensions Institute on the Local Government Pension Scheme structure review; and the admission of Inspire Catering Scotland LLP to the NESPF.

Appended to the report was the Pension Administration Strategy Quarterly Update for Quarter 2 2019/2020; the document revisions summary; the risk register for November 2019; and the new Risk Management Policy.

The report recommended:-

that Committee –

(a)       approve the revisions to the scheme policy documents including creation of a new NESPF specific risk management policy (as set out in 3.9.8 in the report); and

(b)       approve the travel for one appointed Advisory Committee Officer to attend the following:-

·         Partners Group, Denver, March 2020

·         RCP, Chicago, June 2020

·         Harbourvest, Boston, May 2020

·         Harbourvest, Boston, December 2020

At this juncture, the Clerk advised that in accordance with the Pensions Committee Terms of Reference 5.2, the Committee required to determine applications for Admitted Body status, and therefore proposed that Committee also be asked to approve the admission of Inspire Catering Scotland LLP to the NESPF, as set out in 3.10.2 of the report.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         to note the update provided by the Chief Officer – Finance in respect of the work being undertaken to resolve the issue of I-Connect events not being processed, and to request that an explanation of the issue be included in the next Strategy report to the March 2020 meeting if the issue was not resolved by that date;

(ii)        to request that officers investigate if the risk scoring process information in the risk register was correct and if not, to ask that updated information be circulated to Members via email outwith the meeting;

(iii)       to approve the admission of Inspire Catering Scotland LLP to the NESPF; and

(iv)       to otherwise approve the recommendations.

The Board resolved:-

to note the decision of the Committee.