Pension administrators Cartwright has expanded its team with the appointment of Gertrude Sheta to the new role of GMPe project specialist.
Cartwright specialises in DB and hybrid schemes and said this appointment will expand its specialist project team.
Sheta joins from Aon, where she was a project and solutions analyst for eight years and a key member of the GMP audit team. Prior to this she was an administrator at the Department of Work and Pensions.
From these previous roles Sheta has considerable experience of audits of GMP reconciliation work, data modelling, trustee project reports, managing a project plan to ensure it is on track to deliver in time.
Cartwright director of administration Julie Yates says: “The administration market has been experiencing significant growth across the board for some time, but increasingly in the specialist project work being driven by scheme trustees.
“There has been a lot of media attention on the drive to get schemes in a position to complete a risk transfer, [with] many more schemes now in a position of liquidity to be taking advantage of this opportunity. However, what this has unveiled is how behind schemes are in other things, such as data rectification. Schemes are clearly still struggling to make progress but until it’s done, they can’t move forward, and the window of opportunity starts to close.
“As a consequence many more trustees are putting things like GMP projects with a third party. Complexity around poor data, governance and member comms and capacity has always made GMP exercises difficult – now there is additional time pressure.”
She adds that trustees are stretched to make decisions on complex questions, and some administrators are struggling with managing long term projects with many moving parts. Schemes also seem to be moving projects out where they have lost confidence in their existing administrator.
Yates adds: “Because of this, our specialist project team is extremely busy, and we anticipate this to continue to increase, so we continue to recruit ahead of demand.
“[Sheta] is a highly experienced GMP specialist whose outstanding work on GMP reconciliation is well known. She is a welcome addition to our expanding team.”