Pensions Auto Enrolment: An Employers Guide

Our guide to auto enrolment helps to explain the key issues that you will need to address and we can offer assistance with some of these issues.

 When do I have to start auto enrolment?

Our guide explains how you can determine your staging date and the significance of this date in relation to your duties as an employer.

No matter when your staging date is, we can help you with auto enrolment.

How much is auto enrolment going to cost?

Auto enrolment is likely to result in additional costs being borne by your business. These costs will depend on the type of worker you have in your business. The term ‘worker’ includes all of your employees but can sometimes include other persons. Our guide offers more information on this and we can help in areas such as:

• An initial analysis of your workforce
• Preparation of cost budgets.

It is never too early to consider the cost implications of auto enrolment to your business.

Consider who will be the pension provider

Your responsibility as an employer is to have an appropriate pension scheme. We cannot provide advice to you on this as it’s the province of an Independent Financial Adviser or pension consultant. However, in the guide we have set out details of three pension schemes which have been established to cater for the employer of a small or medium sized business.

Ideally, you should choose an appropriate pension scheme provider and apply to that scheme some months before the staging date.

Communicating with your workers

There are some communications that you, as an employer, must send to your workers. These need to be around the time of the staging date but there are precise dates by which you must supply information to your workers. In addition, you may also wish to consider other communications. Our guide explains where information on the appropriate communications is available.

The type of communications you need to send to your workers depends on a number of factors. We can:

• Assess your workers on the staging date
• Help you decide what information needs to be sent to your workers
• Send the information to your workers on your behalf

Enrolment of workers and payment of contributions

The enrolment of workers into a pension scheme and the payment of pension contributions to the scheme will require quite a lot of work.

We can help you considerably in this process, for example by:

• Making an assessment of your workers every pay day to determine whether they need to be enrolled into the pension scheme
• Calculating employee and employer pension contributions
• Preparing payment schedules for the pension scheme provider

How we can help you depends on a number of factors, including your eventual choice of pension provider. Please contact us if you would like to know how we can assist in processing the calculation and payment of pension contributions.

Registering with The Pensions Regulator and keeping records

Inevitably, there are forms to complete and records to keep to comply with the requirements of auto enrolment. Our guide gives some information as to these requirements.

As may also be expected, there are penalties for non-compliance. As part of our auto enrolment service we will complete your registration requirements and work with you to ensure you have the correct records.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us if you require any further information or advice.