What do you think of TPR plans to help smaller employers find a suitable pension scheme?

The Pensions Regulator has recently announced they are consulting over plans to publish a list of compliant pension schemes.  This list would be available early in 2015 to help small and micro employers to meet their automatic enrolment obligations.

All employers, whatever their size or sector, will need to find a suitable pension scheme that meets specific criteria set out by The Pensions Regulator.  Not all pensions schemes will be suitable for automatic enrolment and even if companies have an existing pension scheme in place this may not be suitable.  However despite the fact that choosing a pension scheme will be a key requirement, research by TPR has shown that one in five small or micro employees do not intend to seek advice when choosing a pension scheme, while one in ten either don’t know how to select a scheme or think it will be difficult.

The new list will provide a starting point for smaller employers to quickly see what is available to them in the market.  For acceptance onto the list a scheme will have to meet key criteria, in particular they will have to accept any employer onto the scheme, regardless of size of pay levels.

Charles Counsell, Executive Director for Automatic Enrolment at The Pensions Regulator, states

“We want to head off the risk that small and micro employers may struggle to comply because they lack the information they need to identify a scheme for their staff. It is important employers benefit from information from the regulator about a selection of those schemes that have confirmed to us they are available.

“We believe our proposal to publish on our website a list of schemes that are available for any employer irrespective of how many workers they have or how much they pay is the right one, and I look forward to hearing the views of stakeholders.”

What do you think of the new plans? Do you think this list will help you prepare for automatic enrolment?

Finding a pension scheme is just one of the tasks businesses will need to do in order to comply with automatic enrolment.  IRIS has already helped thousands of businesses throughout the UK to learn the legislation and can help you to get ready.  Preparing early is key to ensuring you hit your staging date – especially as over 44,000 businesses will stage for automatic enrolment in 2015.

IRIS are currently supporting over 1,600 companies assessing over 400,000 employees for automatic enrolment.  

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