The Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme, Darlington, England, is to transfer its administration requirements to Brightwell, manager for the BT Pension Scheme, London, according to a news release.
The Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme is a defined benefit plan with approximately £11 billion ($14 billion) in assets. Although it was closed to future accrual in 1994, when the U.K. coal industry was privatized, the plan still pays out around £700 million in pension payments every year to approximately 110,000 people. It also has around 7,000 deferred members who are yet to start taking their pensions.
The Brightwell mandate with MPS doesn’t cover fiduciary and investment strategy but only administration services, as confirmed in emailed comment to Pensions & Investments.
Brightwell is expected to provide a complete pension administration service to MPS. This includes all member processes to be handled from Brightwell’s administration center, based in Chesterfield, England.
Brightwell will also introduce an online portal for MPS members that prefer to manage their pension online.
Dan Whincup, chief executive of Coal Pension Trustees Services, said: “We’ve been particularly impressed with how Brightwell has transformed services for BTPS members. We know that MPS and BTPS share very similar values, and we will work closely with Brightwell to further improve our own services.”
The MPS administration platform will be hosted on Brightwell subsidiary Procentia’s IntelliPen system, which Brightwell introduced for BTPS in 2021. BTPS had £37.3 billion in assets as of June 30, 2023.
