The Vacancy
Our Third Party Administration (TPA) department is a dynamic administration team with a varied portfolio of clients. They play a key part in providing our clients and members with a market-leading service on Defined Benefits (DB), Defined Contribution (DC) and CARE pension arrangements.
We currently have an exciting opportunity to join this department as a Pensions Technical Consultant, within our Technical Training team in our Birmingham, Edinburgh or Glasgow office.
What will your role look like?
Within this role, you will act as a trusted technical consultant within Pensions Administration, proactively promoting awareness and understanding of relevant legislative and regulatory developments impacting the TPA function. Working closely with the Senior Technical Consultant, the role supports the delivery of pensions administration best practice and drives continuous improvement across the business through the provision of timely, accurate advice, effective communication, and the development of training and guidance for colleagues.
Though this is a varied role, your key tasks will include:
1. Helping to identify, analyse, assess and communicate to the business the impact of changing legislation on TPA’s operations, and advises on practicalities of implementing these.
2. Conduct ongoing technical reviews of TPA documentation, ensuring compliance with FCA Consumer Duty, disclosure regulations and other relevant legislation.
3. Deliver high quality, expert pensions technical advice to TPA in a timely manner.
4. Act as a go to person for technical questions and requests for advice from colleagues.
5. Maintains TPA technical database and provides regular MI reports on volumes of queries and trends.
6. Take an active role in developing and delivering technical training to TPA and colleagues from other business areas for whom the training would be relevant and beneficial.
7. Consult with wider Firm’s Technical and Knowledge Centre to ensure One Firm Approach and capture TPA requirements in respect of any legislative changes.
8. Consult with the TPA Digital team to ensure UPM holds required information and suitable reports to allow statutory reporting to be completed.
9. Regularly check statutory instruments that impact TPA and distributes relevant information to administration teams (e.g. S148 orders, excess revaluation orders, pension increase orders).
10. Actively keep abreast of pensions industry developments, attends events on current industry best practice and legislation. Write and issue legislative and regulatory communications to TPA about these.
11. Maintain a technical/legislative pipeline document and issues TPA technical guidance periodically.
12. Produce a quarterly technical newsletter to be sent to TPA to inform them of any legislative changes or new technical guidance.
13. Assist with client work and undertake work on projects and initiatives as and when required.
14. Work with the TPA Risk Management team to support with the review of Risk Event cases and ensure that proposed solutions will not cause unforeseen technical problems.
To enjoy and succeed in this role, you will have:
15. A degree qualification and/or relevant professional qualification such as PMI, or equivalent relevant industry experience.
16. Extensive proven experience and knowledge of both DB and DC pensions administration subject matter.
17. Strong verbal and written communication skills – able to engage effectively with a wide audience.
18. Good understanding of pension arrangements (DB and DC) and related past, current and future legislation.
19. Solid working knowledge of the integration between pension administration, payroll and benefit administration processes.
20. Evidenced knowledge of pension administration best practice and industry standards.
21. Proven understanding of non-legislative issues that impact on and affect pensions administration.
22. Project management skills and the ability to work effectively to tight deadlines.
Ideally, we would be looking for candidates to hold a professional qualification such as Associate Membership to the Pension Management Institute (or be working towards this). However, we would also be open to applications from candidates who could bring a knowledge of the UK pensions market from relevant industry experience.
We would also encourage applications from candidates who perhaps do not possess all the attributes and experience listed above but are competent with the majority and would be able to quickly develop the additional skills and experience required in post with our full support. We would also love to hear about other knowledge and experience you may have that is not listed but could be of interest.
In addition to a competitive salary, we offer:
23. A flexible selection of employee benefits, so you can choose a package that best matches your lifestyle and needs.
24. A collaborative and encouraging work environment where your thinking and ideas are encouraged.
25. On site mental health and wellbeing assistance.
26. A commitment to helping you develop both personally and professionally, with mentoring opportunities and access to our award-winning learning portal, Aspire.
27. Regular social activities, in addition to three days paid volunteering leave each year and a day’s leave to celebrate your birthday.
28. Hybrid working so you can enjoy the positive wellbeing of working from home as well as the benefits of meeting colleagues in our sociable, modern office environments – with the expectation of two ‘in-office’ days per week.
29. A flexible working window, allowing colleagues the freedom to work flexibly between the hours of 7am and 7pm.
Please note, we recruit on a rolling basis so early applications are recommended to avoid disappointment.
We are committed to being open and transparent in our recruitment and reward processes. Please note that this vacancy does not currently meet the minimum salary threshold requirements for Skilled Worker sponsorship within the UK.
To avoid any disappointment, if you require sponsorship we would encourage you to check whether you may be eligible for a discounted salary threshold, or to explore alternative routes to secure your right to work in the UK before submitting your application. If you meet the criteria outlined in the job description we’ll be happy to discuss your individual circumstances further with you.