The UK's major pensions providers send monthly reports to The Pensions Regulator (TPR) detailing late payment and non-payment of pension contributions and employers who do not have a record of payments due in place. The Pensions Regulator were receiving thousands of reports in different formats, none of which they could process. NTD were asked to research a method to facilitate electronic reporting.
The key areas were identified as:
- Standardized data formats using the emerging XML Schema (XSD) standard
- Data encryption
- Secure data transmission via web and TCP protocols
- A Portal for data reporters
Based on these key requirements an initial pilot was developed. The pilot proved so robust that it was used to service a number of providers for a little over a year whilst the full production model was developed.