Paul Neville, chief digital, data and technology officer at The Pensions Regulator (TPR), is building a strong IT foundation as part of a five-year strategy to help transform the organization from a compliance-based regulator to a risk-based regulator. He explains what this change will mean in practice over the next few years.
“As a regulator, we will obviously still have certain processes that we expect people to follow, but we will be much more concerned about the outcome we are trying to achieve and will make decisions based on that demand,” he says.
“To make this shift, we need to understand our data. We need the right level of automation to explore the information, measure the results, and share those results with industry and other government agencies interested in pensions. We envision a future world where information flows between organizations.”
A historian by training, Neville entered the business world as the Internet boom gained momentum in the 1990s. Describing himself as a self-taught digital leader, he developed his skills in the commercial sector at large companies such as Sky and BT, as well as start-ups and small businesses.
His transformation work at large companies has focused on implementing major technology-enabled change programs to improve the customer experience. Mid-career, he decided to put these skills to good use for society and worked as a consultant for two major charities, Marie Curie and Macmillan, helping those organizations achieve digital transformation.
Neville then turned to the public sector to apply his skills in another useful area. He worked in digital leadership roles in London's Waltham ForestUK Export Finance and Enfield Council before joining TPR in October 2023. Neville ponders this last step.
“This was an opportunity to take all of this experience and implement it on a national scale and impact everyone because almost everyone has a pension, and to be able to make this process work for the citizens of this country and make a difference for people in retirement is a huge challenge,” he says.
“Secondly, the CEO, my boss, Nausicaä Delphas, was creating an opportunity to change not only TPR, but the pension industry, so this role seemed like a chance for me to be a central part of that journey, because not every CIO gets to sit on the board of an organization.”
Process transformation
Neville reflects on the transformation process at TPR, saying it has been an exciting journey: “All members of the executive board agree on the fact that digital, data and technology are key to helping us change as an organization and helping the pension industry transform“
Late last year Neville launched digital, data and technology strategya set of objectives as part of a five-year plan to upgrade TPR's capabilities, introduce new ways of working, improve efficiency, automation and innovation. In March of this year he launched strategy data componentwhich establishes a joint plan to stimulate the adoption of new technologies and data processing standards.
“I'm proud of this strategic work,” he says. “These efforts include strengthening our technology foundation, improving our automation capabilities and ensuring our team has the skills to grow in the future. We have hired quite a lot of people and also consolidated similar skills throughout the organization, and this has allowed us to deliver more and save money on vendors because we have done so much in-house.”
Neville says projects his team has worked on include creating artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help increase automation. They also focused on improving cybersecurity and data management to ensure secure and reliable access to high-quality internal information.
The team also recently launched an innovative service promote dialogue with industry stakeholders. Neville says TPR encourages and enables people and organizations to think differently about the services they provide to their clients and the benefits they provide.
“This is just a small part of what we have done so far,” he says. “We have just under four years left to implement the plan. There is much more we want to do, but we have built confidence, both internally and externally, that we are a different TPR and can deliver results. It is also challenging everyone in our industry to think differently.”
Construction foundations
Neville says the transformation work being driven by this strategy is currently focused on getting the technology foundation right at TPR.
In addition to cybersecurity and data management projects, his team is focused on service management initiatives that help TPR streamline its suite of applications. The organization has adopted a flexible, product-based approach to provide reusable capabilities to provide flexible services in key areas related to pension management within and outside the organization.
TPR is also making strides in automation, including case management. He inherited a situation where things were often managed using spreadsheets or one-off technology solutions. In short, nothing connected. Neville uses automation, via Microsoft Dynamics 365to take a different approach.
“All members of the executive board agree on the fact that digital, data and technology are key to helping us change as an organization and also helping to transform the pensions industry.”
Paul Neville, Pensions Regulator
“We provide a unified case management system,” he says. “We work on process optimization, so we think about the business process first. By taking this approach, we can work in an agile and iterative manner. Where we have already implemented this technology, we have achieved productivity savings of approximately 60%.”
Neville expects the progress made through case management automation to be replicated in other areas. He expects that as automation spreads across organizations, people will spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering better service.
Given the development of the technology sector over the past few years, AI plays a key role.
“We apply AI to specific use cases,” he says. “I have a fantastic data science team that develops a lot of very smart tools for us.”
Using AI
Neville says the next two years will be spent honing these technology initiatives and achieving tangible results.
Key projects include implementing organization-wide data access through Dynamics 365 services and completing transformation projects in key areas such as cybersecurity and data governance. It is these fundamentals and the application of new technologies that will help TPR transform from a compliance-based regulator to a risk-based regulator.
Neville expects that within two years, all the foundational work, from case management to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, will be built into the organization. On this basis, employees will use AI-enabled tools to optimize their work processes.
“This preparatory work will allow us to create more customer-focused digital experiences in the future,” he says.
One example of the use of AI in TPR is the analysis of online news sites to identify potential risks in pension schemes. Neville saw that artificial intelligence could help in what is currently a labor-intensive process.
“This is a great example because many pension schemes don’t have the same name as the provider,” he says. “The technology comes together a lot behind the scenes to make this process work.”
Another example is the use of AI to analyze the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reports that organizations are required to provide by law. Again, generative technology—in the form of OpenAI and Microsoft Azure technologies—helps TPR staff summarize long texts and generate ideas as a basis for intervention when needed.
“These are just two examples,” says Neville. “We have other risk management tools that we use. We are also implementing Copilot internally and are in the middle of implementing our plan for this technology. We GitHub Copilot trial for our developers and they start writing test scripts and it's fun. We, like many people, are still at the beginning of this work, but these projects give an idea of what we want to achieve.”
Problem Solving
Neville says the outcome of this work will be that the future TPR will have an operating environment that is very different from traditional manual-intensive processes. Today, the organization maintains a digital portal where people submit, for example, pension plan reports as part of a large, data-intensive upload. Neville foresees a better approach.
We need to understand our data, as does the entire industry. Firms need to provide the best customer experience for people like you and me who have pensions.
Paul Neville, Pensions Regulator
“There won't necessarily be a return of the scheme like you see today because we will have the information we need and organizations across the industry will be more digitally engaged so they can drive the kind of innovation and competition in the market that will benefit savers, people with pensions and employers offering pensions,” he says.
This new level of digital connectivity will make it easier for TPR and pensions sector organizations to address some of the pressing challenges of our time. One of these issues is adequacy, or the extent to which people save enough money in pension schemes for retirement.
“We need to understand our data, as does the industry. Firms need to provide a better customer experience for people like you and me who have pensions. By focusing on customers, we think the industry will perform better,” he says.
“We might even feel a little like a fintech organization because we will be driving innovation. Technology will give us the insight we need to work with the industry. So we could operate in a completely different world that drives innovation and change for everyone.”
Neville continues to look for ways to accelerate the transformation. He recently helped launch Pensions Data and Digital Working GroupThis will help ensure TFP and the pensions industry work together to embrace digital, data and technology and achieve the digitalization and automation goals set out in the five-year strategy.
“There are 15 members in the working group,” he says. “It's a cross-section of people from different parts of the industry, including trustees, actuaries, lawyers, as well as people from a more technical background. It's about bringing in a variety of people to help solve problems and move into this new world.”
