The Government Actuary's Department has completed a quality
assurance exercise on a pension calculator
tool. It's from Money Helper and it helps calculate people’s
likely retirement income.
The online tool is provided as part of the guidance offered by
Money Helper (formerly the Money Advice Service) and it
calculates people’s likely retirement income.
Quality Assurance
Modelling is essential to work in government. There is increased
emphasis on using appropriate assumptions and methodologies, and
making sure the models are fit for purpose.
Successful QA exercises can lead to confidence in specific and
varied models across a range of disciplines.
GAD has detailed expertise in QA work which is important as
policy and decisions are based on models which are deemed to be
successful.
Checking and reviewing
The QA work in this instance was designed to check the pension
calculator tool is working as expected for Money Helper. The GAD
team:
-
checked if the tool is accurate and consistent with the
documented methodology
-
reviewed the methodology, by checking if it’s still suitable
since the initial development and consistent with the
Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) conduct of business rules
-
undertook user testing to improve the experience for people
who are using the tool
Provides Confidence
As a result of the QA exercise, the GAD team found the tool was
largely fit for purpose. The QA exercise provides confidence to
Money Helper that it can be used by the public on their website.
We provided some suggested ways to improve the tool which Money
Helper is intending to action.
Providing assurance
GAD actuary Chris Witney led on the project. He said: “It’s great
to provide assurance to clients that their models are fit for
purpose and provides confidence in their future use.
“Actuaries are well suited to quality assurance work. This is
because of the review process we undertake as standard for
actuarial work.”
