Ford Motor Company is now in a position to compare the value of the pension provision across its more than 120 schemes in 36 countries after working with investment consultant Redington to develop a new analytics and scoring system.

According to Redington, a key aim for the multinational company was to use the tool to provide a consistent analysis of the “retirement readiness” of its employees.

It said a new digital platform had been developed that provides visualisation of how assets and costs are distributed across countries and schemes, with millions of data points collated for each pension scheme.

In addition, a pension scoring system has been created that awards a score out of 100 to each of Ford’s pension schemes based on up to seven underlying factors, including investment performance, costs and charges, contribution rates and retirement outcomes.

Ford has been added to Redington’s ADA fintech platform – named after Ada Lovelace, born in 1815 and described by some as one of the earliest computer programmers – as part of the launch of the new tool.

“This project was a great example of thinking differently in pensions”

Oliver Payne, EMEA pensions manager at Ford

Oliver Payne, EMEA pensions manager at Ford, said: “This project was a great example of thinking differently in pensions.

“The ADA system means we can move away from our traditional approach of collating and analysing pensions data on an individual project basis. We now have consistent, reliable data available for each project which means we can now be more proactive in the way we look at the costs and value of pension plans around the world.”

Adam Jones, chief technology officer at Redington, said: “We are hugely excited to continue our work with Oliver and the team to explore how we can further develop the tool, and ensure Ford remains on the front foot when it comes to pensions analytics.”