Welcome to the Admin and Data Forum hosted by Professional Pensions. Please ensure you arrive with plenty of time to get settled and enjoy some refreshments before the opening remarks commence!

Join The Pensions Regulator (TPR) for an essential update on the changing landscape of pensions administration. Unpack the growing emphasis on strong, financially secure administration and its strategic importance in delivering safer outcomes for members – looking at the best practice for managing and optimising the trustee-administrator relationship.

Gain detailed insight into TPR’s evolving approach to oversight, engagement, and standards, and how administrators can prepare for the future. 

This session will address: 

• TPR’s administration strategy
• The growth and necessity of financial investment into administration
• What best practice looks like in managing and optimising the trustee-administrator relationship
• What the regulator expects from trustees in driving higher administrative standards and safer member outcomes
• Understanding process-based vs. outcome-based standards and where its headed
  

This session will explore how administration has become strategically important in the buy-in and buy-out space, from addressing how it is a key selection criterion for trustees and sponsors to the potential friction caused by different TPA and insurer administration models. It will also discuss how schemes can carry member trust with them through — and after — the transition, including the role of clear, consistent member communication in maintaining confidence

Ready, set, connect! The pensions dashboard is officially live and real members of the public have begun using it. For industry professionals the conversation has shifted from preparation to execution. In this session we’ll uncover what early testing and real members’ experience reveals. Looking at how an administrator and scheme have worked together to connect and how trustees and administrators can prepare for member queries.

An ideal opportunity to connect with fellow trustees and relish refreshments, for first class company and a second to none experience!

Pensions administration is digitising and embracing AI and it’s important to understand what is working well and proving the most value. To help take your digitalisation to the next level we’ll look at real-life examples where administrations have used AI and technology to streamline operations and create serious cost reductions, showing you how to do the same.

The backbone of the industry remains the people that comprise it. With administration facing a capacity crunch the importance to invest in it and redefine it as a professional career has never been greater. In this session we will explore initiatives to recruit, train and retain skilled administrators, the potential to offshore administration functions and the balance of automation and human judgment. Ultimately, questioning whether pensions could ever become fully digital.

Digitalisation is exposing the pensions industry to new cyber threats and cyber resilience is non-negotiable. In this session, we’ll unpack the various forms these threats take and explore how to build genuine cyber resilience across trustees, administrators, third parties and members – from ransomware attacks and targeted phishing to deepfakes and supply-chain vulnerabilities.

But it doesn’t stop at cyber resilience. It is apparent that as an industry we need to be prepared for the worst case-scenario, therefore, we’ll be outlining what good crisis management and communication looks like following a cyber security breach.

There is valuable knowledge that the pensions industry can learn from other industries. In this session we will gain cross-sector insight about providing excellent customer service, how its measured and what it looks like in practice. 

This session will address:

• The UK Customer Satisfaction Index
• How the leading industries on the UKCSI are approaching customer service
• Customer service trends and predictions for 2026
• How administration can be measured, beyond traditional SLAs, to match the evolving responsibilities

As regulatory expectations rise and technology reshapes every corner of administration, the pensions market stands on the brink of transformation. This panel will discuss how higher evidential standards, digital demands and consolidation are redefining the structure of the industry, creating both new opportunities and barriers to entry.

We’ll look beyond individual schemes or service models to the collective identity emerging across the sector. How trustees, administrators and providers share responsibility for data quality, service standards and outcomes. And how this shared purpose can turn regulatory pressure into progress. Together, we will explore the transition towards a more unified, resilient and trusted pensions ecosystem — one that reflects not just compliance, but collective strength.