Auto Enrolment

Workplace Pension law has changed

Every employer in the UK will be required to help their workers save for retirement. Are you ready?

If you are a UK employer you will be required to automatically enrol eligible employees into a Workplace Pension scheme. The Pension Regulator has already given your business a compulsory staging date confirming the latest date by which you need to have your new Pension Automatic Enrolment duties in place. Even if you already offer pension arrangements for your workers, you will still have some new obligations to meet.

It is important to be proactive with Auto Enrolment and sort out your solution well in advance of your Auto Enrolment staging date. Failure to meet your obligations will result in a range of civil and criminal enforcement measures at the Regulator’s disposal, as well as increased costs and reduced flexibility.

Introducing our Auto Enrolment Solutions

We have worked hard to provide you with a range of options that can be chosen to ensure you comply with the demands of Auto Enrolment, giving you access to a comprehensive service, whatever your requirements.

Option 1 – Scottish Widows and Creative Auto Enrolment
For many businesses, a fully comprehensive service can be provided that will look after all your Auto Enrolment Pension needs, in a ‘one size fits all’ solution. By choosing this route, you will be choosing to invest your Employees’ pension within a Pension Trust Fund which is run by Scottish Widows, one of the UK’s major pension providers.
Scottish Widows offers a modest range of funds for investment and the employee’s ‘pot’ is fully portable (i.e. transferable) upon leaving your employment. This solution handles the entire process for you, from the preparation and complex decision making to the pension provision, implementation and record keeping.

There is a modest monthly support fee for the ongoing assistance needed to monitor your payroll and ensure you remain compliant.

Option 2 – NEST Pensions and LPAES
If you require more choice with the calculation and structure of your employees’ deductions and the contributions payable by your company, another route might be to opt for this more flexible solution. With the assistance of Lansdown Place Auto Enrolment Solutions (LPAES), an initial assessment of your needs is undertaken and a report is drafted, using details from your payroll, which will provide a detailed review and analysis to assist you in understanding the options and making the right decisions. (The report will identify various options for you to consider, and can be used to take to a number of different pension providers.)

As with Option 1 above, this solution will include and deal with all of the monitoring, reporting and communication necessary. It includes advising you and the pension provider of deductions to be paid and ensuring new employees are correctly enrolled, and a full trail is visible to meet your compliance obligations.

There is a charge for the report if required and an initial fee to cover any discussions that might be needed to allow you to select the right option, taking you through to set up a scheme. The default pension fund would be provided by NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) Pensions. There is then ongoing support to maintain compliance – for an agreed modest monthly charge. This regular support is based upon sharing the pay run data before it is finalised for each period, and reviewing the workforce data against the Auto Enrolment criteria.

The NEST scheme charges employees fund management charges in accordance with statutory charging levels.

Option 3 – the Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) route
Should your requirements be more specific than can be provided by either Option 1 or 2 above, we can recommend some excellent IFAs (Independent Financial Advisors) who can assist you with your investment Auto Enrolment requirements and design bespoke schemes with access to many more fund choices than the default plans referred to in the above options.

Get in touch

For further details of our advisory services and to chat about your own requirements, please call the team on 01454 415645, or get in touch with one of our specialists directly.