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Auto-Enrolment Guidance

Hundreds of thousands of small and medium sized businesses will have to plan for meeting their pension obligations in 2017 and beyond. To help them The Pensions Regulator has updated their website with new auto-enrolment guidance on auto-enrolment & re-enrolment.   They are seeking to make the system simpler to understand for employers and reduce confusion about their obligations.

The update includes additional information about your employees’ options with their pension choices.   It lists all of the available schemes available to small businesses and  information on tax relief and costs. It also offers a handy auto-enrolment guidance on how to choose a pension advisor.   The list of pensions schemes and associated links is below:

Auto-Enrolment Guidance For Large Firms

The new website also provides easily accessible information for large employers who are engaging in re-enrolment, the dates required for completion and re-decleration compliance. It also hosts a number of useful webinars, one of which can be viewed below.

Employers are obligated to comply with their duties under auto-enrolment. As I’m sure you’re aware any employer that chooses to neglect these responsibilities is liable to enforcement action by the Pensions Regulator. This can include fines and/or prosecution.   For more information please see the Pension Regulator’s website on what you should do if you think you are not complying with your auto enrolment obligations.  In general their policy is to backdate all required pension contributions from when they should have started.

Auto-Enrolment Time Line

Starting in April 2018 employers must ensure that they increase their legal minimum pension contributions to 5%.     The employees’ minimum requirement is 2%. They  increase again in 2019 up to 8% with employees’ minimum contributions of 3%.