Pension Fund Administration Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Pension Fund Administrator, Benefits Manager and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-CB-034

Before you join: Participants should understand the main pension administration events, including enrolment, contributions, transfers, retirement and death notifications.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Pension administrators must process contributions, benefit events, transfers, retirements and member enquiries accurately while maintaining auditable records and protecting sensitive personal data. Legacy platforms, manual hand-offs, fragmented payroll feeds and poorly controlled vendor interfaces can create payment errors, missed service levels, member complaints and regulatory exposure. Technology choices now affect the full administration operating model: data quality, workflow control, communications, reporting, cybersecurity and business continuity.

This course examines how pension administration technology supports defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid plan operations. Participants learn to map pension processes, define system requirements, assess data readiness, configure workflow controls and manage interfaces with payroll, trustees, investment managers, insurers and member portals. The programme covers core administration platforms, calculation engines, document management, case management, automation, analytics, cloud services, cybersecurity, supplier governance and implementation assurance.

Instruction combines focused briefings with pension administration cases, process-mapping work, system-requirements reviews, data-quality analysis, control design and supplier assessment discussions. Participants apply methods to realistic events such as member enrolment, contribution reconciliation, retirement processing, transfer values and deceased-member cases. They leave with a reusable pension administration technology improvement pack containing a process map, requirements catalogue, data-control checklist, vendor scorecard and implementation action plan.

The course suits pension fund administrators, benefits operations teams, HR reward specialists, trusteeship support staff and technology professionals supporting pension plans. It is relevant to public-sector funds, corporate schemes, financial institutions, insurers, third-party administrators and organisations consolidating pension operations or replacing ageing administration systems.

What you will be able to do

  • Map pension administration processes using BPMN 2.0 and service-level measures
  • Define system requirements for pension records, calculations, workflows and member services
  • Assess member and payroll data quality using profiling, reconciliation and exception analysis
  • Design automated controls for contributions, benefit events, approvals and audit trails
  • Evaluate pension administration vendors through weighted scoring and due diligence
  • Specify secure interfaces between pension platforms, payroll, finance and member portals
  • Plan a controlled pension system implementation using migration, testing and cutover methods
  • Develop technology governance reports covering service performance, risk and change control

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Produce clearer requirements for pension platform changes and supplier discussions
  • Identify data defects before they create incorrect contributions or benefit payments
  • Assess automation opportunities without weakening approval and audit controls
  • Contribute credibly to pension system selection, migration and testing projects
  • Report technology risks and administration performance more effectively to senior stakeholders

For your organisation

  • Fewer manual processing errors through defined workflows, validations and exception handling
  • Improved contribution reconciliation between payroll, finance and pension administration records
  • Stronger evidence for trustee oversight, internal audit and regulatory reviews
  • Better supplier accountability through measurable service levels and governance routines
  • Lower implementation risk during pension platform replacement, consolidation or data migration

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can explain how technology supports the pension administration operating model and its control environment.

  • Pension administration lifecycle from enrolment through retirement, death and transfers
  • Defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid administration processing differences
  • Operating model components: people, process, data, systems and suppliers
  • Service-level agreements for transaction turnaround, accuracy and member enquiries
  • Administration risk taxonomy covering operational, data, technology and supplier risks
  • Technology architecture linking administration, payroll, finance, investments and portals

Participants can map pension processes and design controlled digital workflows for priority events.

  • BPMN 2.0 notation for pension events, decisions, hand-offs and exceptions
  • Map enrolment workflows from eligibility determination to member confirmation
  • Contribution processing steps from payroll receipt to allocation and reconciliation
  • Retirement case workflow with calculations, approvals, payments and communications
  • Exception queues, ageing reports and escalation paths for unresolved cases
  • Segregation of duties across initiation, review, approval and payment release

Participants can assess pension data quality and specify controls for payroll and member-data interfaces.

  • Member master-data fields, identifiers, effective dates and record ownership
  • Data profiling techniques for completeness, validity, duplication and timeliness
  • Payroll interface specifications covering earnings, deductions, hours and employment changes
  • Reconcile contribution files using control totals, tolerance rules and exceptions
  • Effective-dated records for salary changes, service history and beneficiary elections
  • Data lineage from source HR records through pension calculation outputs

Participants can distinguish core pension technology functions and assess their fit with administration needs.

  • Core administration platform functions for records, events, calculations and payments
  • Rules engines managing eligibility, vesting, accruals and retirement options
  • Calculation audit trails showing inputs, assumptions, overrides and approvals
  • Case-management features for queues, correspondence, tasks and service monitoring
  • Document management controls for retention, retrieval, versioning and legal holds
  • Member self-service functions for statements, nominations, updates and enquiries

Participants can design automation opportunities with appropriate preventive, detective and corrective controls.

  • Business rules automation for eligibility checks, contribution validation and notifications
  • Robotic process automation suitability assessment using volume, rules and exception rates
  • Preventive controls blocking incomplete records, duplicate payments and invalid calculations
  • Detective controls using reconciliations, exception reports and threshold alerts
  • Control matrices linking risks, activities, evidence, owners and frequencies
  • Human review points for discretionary decisions and complex benefit cases

Participants can specify reliable integrations and digital member services for pension administration.

  • Application programming interfaces for secure real-time pension data exchange
  • Batch interfaces using file layouts, validation rules and transmission schedules
  • ISO 20022 message concepts relevant to payment and financial data exchanges
  • Member portal design for accessibility, authentication, statements and transactions
  • Digital communications controls for consent, delivery evidence and language preferences
  • Omnichannel case history combining portal, email, telephone and correspondence records

Participants can identify technology security, privacy and continuity controls for pension administration services.

  • ISO 27001 control themes for pension data confidentiality and availability
  • Role-based access control using least privilege and periodic recertification
  • Multi-factor authentication for administrators, trustees, members and external suppliers
  • Privacy impact assessment for new member portals and data-sharing arrangements
  • Incident response runbooks for ransomware, data breaches and payment disruption
  • Business continuity plans covering recovery objectives, backups and alternate processing

Participants can evaluate pension technology providers and govern outsourced administration services.

  • Requirements catalogue separating mandatory functions, preferences and future options
  • Weighted vendor scorecards using functionality, security, cost and implementation criteria
  • Request for proposal questions on calculations, interfaces, reporting and support
  • Due diligence review of financial stability, references and delivery capacity
  • Service governance meetings using KPIs, incidents, root causes and actions
  • SOC 1 reports assessed for relevant controls and complementary user controls

Participants can plan controlled pension technology implementation from requirements through post-go-live assurance.

  • Implementation governance with sponsor, steering group, workstreams and decision rights
  • Migration mapping from legacy fields to target data structures
  • Data cleansing rules for duplicates, missing values and invalid dates
  • Test strategy covering unit, integration, user acceptance and parallel testing
  • Benefit calculation test packs using normal, boundary and exception cases
  • Cutover planning with readiness criteria, rollback decisions and communication schedules

Participants can use administration metrics and governance routines to prioritise sustained technology improvements.

  • Operational dashboards for volumes, turnaround, errors, backlogs and member satisfaction
  • Key risk indicators tracking access breaches, failed interfaces and overdue exceptions
  • Root-cause analysis using five whys and fishbone diagrams
  • COBIT 2019 governance objectives for performance, risk and change oversight
  • Change advisory board decisions for releases, fixes and configuration amendments
  • Ninety-day improvement plan with owners, milestones, measures and dependencies

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Pension administration BPMN process map template
  2. Payroll and member-data reconciliation checklist
  3. Pension technology requirements catalogue
  4. Administration control matrix
  5. Weighted vendor evaluation scorecard
  6. Ninety-day technology improvement plan

Who should attend

  • Pension Fund Administrator — needs controlled, efficient processing of member and benefit events
  • Benefits Manager — oversees pension operations, suppliers and employee service quality
  • HRIS Manager — integrates pension administration systems with payroll and employee data
  • Pension Operations Manager — manages workflows, exceptions, service levels and operational risk
  • Trustee Secretariat Professional — needs informed oversight of administration controls and reporting
  • Technology Project Manager — delivers pension platform changes, migrations and supplier implementations

Skills and tools covered

Pension process mappingData quality controlSystems requirements analysisVendor due diligenceImplementation assuranceTechnology risk governance

Tools and standards

BPMN 2.0, ISO 27001, COBIT 2019, SOC 1

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings followed by structured work on pension administration scenarios. Participants analyse process maps, contribution files, member-record exceptions, interface specifications and vendor proposals. Group exercises apply BPMN 2.0, data profiling, control matrices and weighted vendor scoring to defined benefit and defined contribution cases. A system implementation simulation tests decisions on migration, testing, cutover and incident response. Each participant completes an application plan for a current technology, data or process issue within their pension administration environment.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the main pension administration events, including enrolment, contributions, transfers, retirement and death notifications. Experience in HR, payroll, benefits, pension operations, fund administration, technology delivery or supplier management is appropriate. Familiarity with spreadsheets and basic business-process documentation will help when reviewing data and workflows. The course does not require programming skills, database administration experience, actuarial qualifications or prior use of a particular pension platform. It explains technical concepts from an administration and control perspective rather than training participants to configure software code.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should know the basic pension administration lifecycle or have related experience in HR, payroll, benefits, fund operations or technology delivery. No programming, database administration or actuarial qualification is required.

Bring a laptop if possible, together with a non-confidential example of a process issue, reporting challenge or planned system change. Course materials and case data are provided, so no specific software licence is needed.

It is designed for professionals responsible for pension administration, benefits operations, HRIS, supplier oversight, trustee support or pension technology projects. It is most useful for people who must improve processes or make informed decisions about administration systems.

This course focuses on the systems, data, workflows, controls and suppliers that make pension administration work reliably. It does not teach pension law in depth, actuarial valuation methods or reward strategy design.

Participants can use the templates to map a priority process, investigate data exceptions, improve a payroll interface or prepare requirements for a technology change. The final action plan identifies practical steps, owners and measures for the next 90 days.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. Time is divided between instructor input, case analysis, group work, simulations and structured application planning across ten modules.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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