The Royal Mail Pensions Service Centre is one of the few major in-house, standalone pensions administration offices left in the UK. Most others have either outsourced to specialist admin businesses, as the Invensys Pension Scheme did last year, or turned themselves into specialists, like RPMI, which began as the Railways Pension Scheme’s admin department and last year won Financial News’ administration award.

This year the Royal Mail's office in Chesterfield beat four private-sector peers to win Financial News' Best Pensions Administration award, with a convincing margin over Capita Employee Benefits, the largest of the outsourced providers.