Top Responding Providers Half Letter of Authority Performance Timescales
- Providers’ Letter of Authority (LoA) response times are tracked through Pension Lab’s quarterly LoA Performance Index to support LoA performance monitoring and peer comparison.
- The slowest-performing organisation in Q3 significantly improves in Q4, almost halving their response times.
- Response times range from 5.1 days to 20.9 days, compared to manual processing timescales of 9.6 days to 59.5 days.
The LPI collates data from thousands of LoAs processed monthly through Pension Lab’s digital LoA system, with over 300 providers, platforms, master trusts and third-party administrators.
By ranking the performance of the highest-volume LoA-processing organisations, response times range from an average of 5.1 to 20.9 days for Q4 2024. By comparison, manual LoA processing timescales double from 9.6 days to 59.5 days[1].
Scott Phillips, CEO and founder of Pension Lab, said:
“The Q4 2024 data continues to highlight the variation between organisations, the seasonal impact as well as improvements within individual organisations from quarter to quarter. Combined with faster response times, our digital service, with time-saving features like digital signatures, can save up to 80% of time spent processing LoAs.
“The LPI has become a pivotal tool for LoA benchmarking, helping raise industry standards. And while it remains anonymised, each affected organisation is privately informed of their position. This approach fosters collaboration, enabling organisations to make meaningful improvements for the benefit of customers. For example, we’ve helped organisations move from paper to email and refined our processing to work better with their systems.
“With the insights from the LPI and the ongoing work of FLAG (Fix LoA Action Group) to develop Standards with support from Criterion, collaborative efforts are making significant strides in addressing LoA inconsistencies.”
Pension Lab publishes the LPI quarterly.
[1] https://thelangcat.co.uk/report/just-fix-it-already-the-broken-letter-of-authority-process-in-uk-wealth-management/