The guidance highlights how the ending of contracting-out will affect pension entitlements, and says administrators will need to check members' Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP).

Under the new rules, administrators are required to make sure that members’ entitlements resulting from contracted-out employment are protected. They also have to provide a GMP to members for contracted-out service between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 1997 (a GMP is payable at age 60 for a women and 65 for a man).

In order to calculate the GMP, HMRC is providing an online service which can be accessed via a government gateway account for the pension scheme online service.

The GMP checker can be used to get either an instant calculation for one member at a time, or for a bulk calculation. For bulk calculation, administrators need to upload a CSV template and will be sent an email when the result is ready.

For each calculation administrators need to supply the member’s scheme contracted out number; national insurance number; first name or initial; and last name.

HMRC has said it will continue to offer support to deal with any queries up until December 2018 under the existing scheme reconciliation service (SRS), which was originally set up in early 2014 to allow pension scheme administrators to reconcile their membership and GMP data against the records held by HMRC.

HMRC guidance, Pension administrators: end of contracting-out is here

Details of the contracted-out scheme reconciliation service are here