The government has put its weight behind the creation of
a public body to develop and administer the IT systems for a
National Pension Savings Scheme.
Last week’s pensions white paper made clear the government’s
preference for a personal account scheme run by a centralised
public organisation, raising the prospect of the government
embarking on another high-profile IT project. The state agency
would develop and run the systems for automatically enrolling
customers with the service, and collecting and processing pension
contributions.
The Association of British Insurers which represents private
sector insurance companies said it would continue to press for a
scheme run by the private sector that makes more of the industry’s
existing pensions technology and infrastructure.
“We remain convinced that the systems that are needed to run
such a scheme already exist in our member companies and all that
would be required is greater interconnectivity,” an ABI
spokesperson said.
Andrew Power, an insurance partner at consultancy group
Deloitte, said insurers only had a brief opportunity to make a
compelling and costed case for making more use of existing
private-sector IT systems. “I would say they have three to six
months to make that case”, he said.
For the government to meet its timetable for a new pensions
scheme by 2012, Power said there was much to be done. All design
issues would need to be resolved quickly to enable legislation next
year, which would be followed by a complex procurement process that
could take two years. This would leave only another two years to
build and develop the necessary infrastructure.