Welcome to Workplace Pension the UK’s leading Occupational / Company pension comparison site...

Workplace Pension are a team of Independent Financial Advisers, Accountants and Pension Consultants who are able to review your w orkplace pension scheme to ensure you are ready for new government regulations.

The UK government has passed legislation to introduce new workplace pension scheme requirements through a number of stages over the next two years. Our team of experienced professionals aim to help employers be compliant and prepared for these changes and look to reduce their overall pension costs wherever possible.

Workplace Pension are highly qualified individuals who are completely independent from any one pension provider. We offer experience and advice with regards to workplace pension schemes to ensure you have a suitable scheme in place and you are not paying too much for it.

Company Pension legislation changes

The government will be introducing a significant workplace pension scheme (also known as a Company Pension Scheme) reform programme and employers are being advised to assess their responsibilities within the next 2 years.

All employers will be required to automatically enrol most employees into a qualifying workplace pension scheme and to make minimum contributions into it. This will provide the majority of employed people in the UK with a separate workplace pension scheme to supplement their State Pension in retirement.

New legislation will apply to all companies which employ one or more members of staff and auto enrolment will apply to employees aged between 22 and state pension age, earning more than £7,475. Therefore all employers will have to make a contribution into a company pension for the majority of their staff.

Workplace pension scheme legislation will require many firms to make contributions from 2012 however employers should be considering their options as soon as possible in order to ensure they are compliant in time for the introduction of the new rules. For example, some firms may plan to offer staff a pay rise in 2012, but should consider whether they can afford to pay a 3% contribution to a pension and offer a payrise to all staff in the same year.

All companies should at least be aware of the exact date when their specific business should start making contributions to a company pension for eligible employees.

It is advisable to ensure your workplace pension scheme will be appropriate now and in the future, not just to satisfy new legislation. There are various reasons why some workplace pension schemes are not competitive, mainly due to either their charging structures being too high or through offering poor fund performance. It is also important to consider how well your workplace pension provider communicates with the employer and the scheme members - for example whether the existing workplace pension scheme offers online access to members showing employee benefit information or tools to help firms internal processes run smoothly and so on.

Employers have certain responsibilities to ensure they are compliant with the new workplace pension scheme rules. The consequences of not following the new legislation can be expensive, for example a company employing 500 people may be fined £10,000 per day where they do not pay into a pension for their employees.

Any employer who currently has a company pension in place would be advised to review its suitability and ensure it is ready to meet the new pension reform legislation. If there is currently no workplace pension scheme in place then it is advisable to establish what is expected of the company and when action would need to be taken.

Employees should assess their state retirement pension along with their workplace pension scheme as they may be unaware of how much the plan is projected to pay, at their selected retirement age.

It may be worthwhile for employees to consider their definition of a workplace pension scheme, whether it is a defined benefit or defined contribution scheme, or were they offered a stakeholder pension. This often depends on which year their pension was set up. They may wish to take a workplace pension lump sum payment on retirement, or they may rather just take a pension income, yearly or monthly.

A new simplified workplace pension scheme, NEST (National Employment Savings Trust), formerly known as personal accounts, will be introduced as one such qualifying workplace pension scheme. The intention is that NEST will operate like any other trust based, multi-employer defined contribution workplace pension scheme, but it will be focussed on a target audience of low to moderate earners. It may be that the NEST pension is suitable for low salary employees but the scheme would not be appropriate for key members of staff such as company directors. There are various issues regarding the potential NEST proposition and it is advisable to speak to professionals to check whether this plan would be suitable for your workplace pension scheme.

There are many issues which employers need to address now as there may be questions and considerations needing to be answered before 2012. To begin with, all employers need to conduct an analysis to see how many employees will be affected and whether their existing pension scheme meets the quality requirements. Even if they do have a qualifying workplace pension scheme, employers must decide whether to use this pension scheme or simply auto-enrol staff into NEST. Of course, some may decide to use NEST for certain categories of employee and their own scheme for others.

Auto-enrolment will almost certainly have a direct impact on employers' pension costs, they may also want to use this as an opportunity to review benefits for all staff, including the ongoing provision of a defined benefit scheme (if applicable).

What can Workplace Pension do to help?

We are a team of Independent Financial Advisers who specialise in workplace pension schemes. Our aim is to assist companies to review their existing workplace pension provision to ensure it is compliant for new legislation and assess whether there are any cost savings to be made. If there is currently no pension provision in place we would offer financial advice to establish a workplace pension scheme which would comply with new pension legislation.

To speak to one of our professionals please contact Workplace Pension.

Workplace Pension offer an initial consultation phone call with an Independent Financial Adviser to discuss your potential needs.

Please contact us to book in an appropriate time.