Anyone work as a pensions administrator/officer?

[Flapjacker48]

As in pensions management for a public sector body (NHS trust/LG etc) or large private firm? So the running of the pension scheme rather than investment decisions etc.

I'm looking for a bit of a career change and am interested in this work. Are the CIPPS courses in this are worth doing? Or the Pensions Management Institute? I think the PMI courses can only be done "in-post"?

Grateful for any info/thoughts from people who work in this area.

Thanks.

Don't do it 😂 I'm a payroll manager on the NHS and 99% of my time is taken up with sodding NHS pensions. I detest them.

The processes are so old and backwards. There are so many improvements that could be made!

@OnTheRunWithMannyMontana

Thanks!!

I saw that most NHS pension jobs are combined payroll/pension jobs! (I take it as the NHSBSA is the overall scheme "owner")

Assuming I'm mad enough (!) what sort of qualifications in payroll and pensions do your staff have?

What sort of NHS grades - seems most payroll/pensions jobs are band 4.....

A lot of pensions admin staff left the industry post Covid. It tends to be female biased. To be honest it’s something you could get into straight away without any qualifications at the moment due to the number of vacancies. The company you work for will train you up.

You will then be able to do related qualifications if you want to which work will sponsor. Which you should if you want to progress. Once you’ve been working in the industry for a while, outside of London you could probably expect to get £30-35K once you have some experience. It’s usually very flexible for WFH as well as businesses want to keep people.

If you go on a site offering pensions jobs there are lots of alternatives rather than just public sector pensions administration.

I do! We do private company pensions. Entered as a trainee and our company gives us study time and pays for all our exams. Thinks ours are CPC and PMI.
Feel free to pop me over a message if any questions.

I specialise in payroll so I am CIPP qualified. No specific pensions qualifications just experience. Although with the level of complexity just with this months changes alone I'm trying to convince them they need a pensions administrator!

Don't do it! It's mind numbingly boring. Very process-driven and just dull, in my opinion. I wish someone had warned me before I jumped into it as a career change. I left after 7 months.

What about HMRC? I worked in an office that dealt with the biggest pension schemes in the country, I know now all work is done centrally but you would get variation, good prospects for promotion & very family friendly.