Pension auto enrolment: Are you aware of your employer obligations?

ACE has advice on an issue that will affect all companies and particularly SMEs from April.  And it is offering pension solution.

Automatic enrolment legislation affects all UK employers. Pension provision in the UK was reviewed by the Pension Commission to create an employer responsibility to automatically enrol jobholders into a pension scheme. 

The legislation requires substantial changes in the way employers operate. Penalties for non-compliance can be severe and could range from £50 to £10,000 per day depending on the size of the organisation.

The date the legislation affects you will depend on the size of your business.  Larger firms with more than 50 employees will have needed to complete auto enrolment by April 2015 – with firms with 49 employees and less being the focus from August 2015.  The time for SMEs to act is NOW! 

Firms with 250 employees and over had to hit their deadline last year. For others, these are the key dates.

250 to 50 employees - staging dates are April 2014 to April 2015

49 to 30 employees - staging dates are August 2015 to October 2015

Under 30 employees - staging dates are June 2015 to April 2017.

Automatic enrolment requires considerable planning. There are over 100 checks that should be performed for each of your workers requiring a specialist system in place to perform these checks. Majority of UK employers have not done any cost modelling to ascertain what the costs of automatic enrolment might be for their business.

The good news is that ACE, working with its specialist partners, Charles Stanley Financial Solutions, has put in place a state of the art dedicated solution to help its members through the automatic enrolment maze, to ensure that members understand the changes and what their obligations are.

Even if a member is currently providing pension benefits to your employees, there are a series of rules that will determine whether your scheme is a qualifying scheme for automatic enrolment purposes. Auto enrolment is a complicated area and you may still benefit from additional support.

The ACE Pension Solution

From as little as £390 per annum (for employers with up to 5 workers), the ACE Complete Pension Trust provides:

• A scheme delivered through established and proven market leaders.
• A low annual management charge (paid by employees) of 0.48% per annum, which is both competitive and well below the Government’s charge cap of 0.75% per annum.
• Access to a well governed range of investment options.
• Guaranteed acceptance to a qualifying pension scheme including smaller members
• Access to and use of our state of the art online compliance system with full video support.
• A safe and secure, easy to administer pension solution, which helps you plan ahead and keeps you on top of your on-going responsibilities with a robust and repeatable automatic enrolment process.
• A trust based arrangement with the trustees acting in the members’ best interests and ACE representation at trustee meetings.
• No restrictions or penalties on transfer of funds in and out of the scheme. 
• Telephone support to members who may elect to buy additional telephone based support as and when required.
• Employee access to an exclusive online shopping platform.

For further information on the ACE Complete Pension Trust, please visit http://www.acenet.co.uk/pensions/953 or telephone ACE on 020 7222 6557