OREANDA-NEWS. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading IT services, consulting, and business solutions firm, announced today that its TCS BaNCS customer, National Employment Savings Trust (NEST)in the UK, has crossed the1 millionth member mark.

NEST was established under UK law as part of the UK government's workplace pension reforms that require all UK employers to enroll their eligible workforce into a qualifying workplace pension scheme and make contributions along with the employee contribution component. The reforms started in October 2012 and are being rolled out to UK employers over the next three years.

Tim Jones, Chief Executive Officer, NEST, said, “NEST membership has grown from a few hundred members to over one million in under two years. The TCS solution has been invaluable in helping NEST deliver the service and functionality we needed whilst having the capacity to deal with exponential increases in both employers and members coming to us. The NEST scheme is centred on the core pension administration platform, TCS BaNCS for pensions. This has helped us meet our objectives by delivering a secure, scalable and robust solution offering flexibility, customization, high performance and advanced functionality. Reaching this member milestone is an important moment for us, but there's a lot more to do to make sure that the millions more people due to be enrolled over the next few years continue to receive and have access to a great pension scheme, giving them a helping hand to save for their future.”

Vijaya Deepti, Vice-President, TCS Financial Solutions said “TCS has been the IT solutions partner and administrator for the NEST Scheme since 2010. NEST went operational with volunteer employers in July 2011, beating by 15 months the official deadline of commencing full-scale operations in October 2012. The enrollment of the millionth member on April 1, 2014, is a significant milestone for NEST, and TCS is extremely proud of this partnership and program. More importantly, being a part of the UK Government's ”Digital by Default” initiative gives added impetus to TCS Digital Re-imagination program that has a connected simplified customer experience at its core.”

NEST is a defined contribution trust-based, workplace pension scheme set upto ensure that all UK companies have guaranteed access to a high quality, low-cost pension scheme for their workers. It has a public service obligation to be open to any UK employer that wants to use it. It is primarily delivered online, to enable both employers and members to avail self-service.

TCS is NEST's IT solutions partner and scheme administrator. As part of the engagement that began in 2010, TCS delivered outcome-based, end-to-end administration services, set up the IT platform, including operational processes for front- and back-office, IT infrastructure hosting and overarching management and governance of the entire program. TCS BaNCS sits at the heart of the NEST scheme and the entire TCS solution encompasses 'Full Services Play', leveragingTCS BaNCS, IT services, technology, and infrastructure and BPS services.

TCS BaNCS is highly customizable, secure and scalable and is the core solution at NEST with other readily customizable off-the-shelf products from leading vendors and strategic alliance partners from TCS forming the periphery of the greater implementation. This comprehensive solution supports all mainstream business processes such as covering employer participation, enrolling members, collecting contributions, managing accounts, accessing savings and passing of funds to the fund administrator, among others.

In line with the UK Government's “Digital by Default” initiative, the NEST scheme is based on the principle of Straight-Through Processing (STP) and is pre-dominantly delivered over digital channels coupled with a high level of self-service capabilities.