SMPI Simpler Annual Statements
From 1 October 2022, Occupational Schemes or Personal Pension Schemes that are used for Automatic Enrolment were required to provide the “simpler annual benefit statement” as part of their annual benefit statement.
The Department of Work and Pensions has stipulated that other pension schemes should adopt “the principles of this guidance – statements are a maximum of one double-sided sheet of A4 paper.”
As a result, the SMPI statements generated by Platinum now conform to the new simpler annual benefit statement layout, which you can brand and customise to your specific needs. The SMPI template is now stored in Report~Pro, with the following image representing the first page of the 2-page illustration:
Annual Review Pack Enhancements
The process to generate Annual Review Packs (ARPs) for members has been simplified into a single process.
The ARP statement has been simplified and modernised to make it more appealing to your clients. The following image illustrates the new look and feel:
Banking Enhancements
We have introduced the first phase of our banking enhancements, with the focus on providing:
enhanced bank account, sort code & branch validations for UK accounts
improved structures for storing and notating foreign bank accounts
improvements to Platinum virtual and pooled bank account management
A third party lookup service has been implemented to ensure that the relationship between accounts, sort codes, banks and branches are validated, reducing the risk of keying errors.
Bulk CVM Enhancements
The bulk CVM process within Platinum has been improved such that errors and exceptions are passed over to allow the process to complete for the selected members. The failing cases are gathered and stored in a new errors grid, so they can be addressed after the process has completed.
The CVM is now streamed, which has resulted in a significant uplift in performance.
Smaller Changes
The release includes a new Report~Pro endpoint to enable you to create reports on Plan Valuations. The existing Branches endpoint has also been updated.
The Gilt Yields have also been updated.