Accountants working for practice manager, GP and other partners can now directly access their clients’ pension records held by PCSE, simplifying vital administrative processes and eliminating errors.
The new feature went live last week, following lobbying by the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants (AISMA).
The change isn’t automatic – practice managers will have to take steps to create a link between an accountant and the relevant pension scheme member.
Previously, although accountants could be given approval by a practice manager to access financial information via the PCSE portal that related to a surgery, it was not possible to link accountants to individual clients, including GP partners and clinical and non-clinical partners.
This meant that accountants couldn’t easily access their clients’ employee contribution statement – a summary of what an individual has paid into their pension – which is required by practice partners to complete a pension end of year return, also known as the Type 1 form, explained Andy Pow, adviser to the AISMA board.
A key benefit of the change is that it removes a layer of bureaucracy, Mr Pow said. ‘Accountants no longer having to bother practice managers, GPs and other partners with requests to access and download records on their behalf’.
Crucially, he added it could also potentially reduce pension errors. ‘One of the issues with completing end of year forms is that for whatever reason there can sometimes be differences between an accountants’ analysis of employee contributions and what PCSE has on record. It could have been that PCSE didn’t record something accurately.
‘Now, with this new change, accountants will be able to see the PCSE record of contributions for an individual prior to completing the end of year form and take steps to get it corrected. So, this should remove one of the big rejection errors and improve processes.’
Practice managers can give approval for single or multiple accountants to access pension records.
‘There is some short term pain in that a practice manager will have to go through the approval process,’ warns Mr Pow ‘but it is permanent after that so it doesn’t need to be repeated. They can also remove access, of course, if accountants change.’
Practice managers can find out more on how to link an accountant to a pension scheme member in this video.
