Auto Enrolment

What is Auto Enrolment?

Auto Enrolment is a government led scheme to help provide employees with a pension fund. Employees are assessed under certain criteria and if eligible, are automatically enrolled into the company’s chosen scheme.

As an Employer

As an employer, it’s your responsibility to ensure you enrol your people on a suitable pension scheme. At Greengages we make running your pension scheme easy – because we are your payroll provider we can manage your auto-enrolment too. Talk to us and you’ll find you spend less time administering your business and more time growing it.

Summary of Employer Responsibilities

All employers will have to undertake the following at their Staging Date (or ‘start date’) and on a continuing basis.

  • Offer a qualifying pension scheme and register it with The Pensions Regulator.
  • Automatically enrol all existing eligible jobholders within one month of starting and auto-enrol all newly employed and newly eligible workers.
  • Provide information to workers to let them know they are being automatically enrolled and information concerning their auto-enrolment.
  • Provide information to all workers who are not eligible on how they can voluntarily opt-in to pension savings. Some workers are eligible for pension contributions from the employer without having to make a contribution themselves. These workers will need to be identified and monitored for any changes to circumstances.
  • Job holders can stop pension saving at any time but only after they have been auto-enrolled. They must do this themselves using the method provided by the chosen pension company.
  • Administer opt-outs, cessations and refunds within the prescribed time periods.
  • Around every 3 years, all jobholders who have opted-out must be re-enrolled back into the qualifying company scheme.
  • Keep records for 6 years about jobholders and the pension scheme including all opt-out and opt-in notices.

Greengages can do all the above and run your auto-enrolment pensions through our payroll system and provide the pension companies with the correct information needed. We can set up a scheme with Smart or Nest on the client behalf but only because these are free.

  • Your pension scheme must be registered with the Pensions Regulator – we can do this.
  • Re-enrolment and TPR declaration must be done every three years. – we can do this.

Legals

It is against the law for an employer to actively encourage an individual to opt-out, such as offering alternative benefits that are mutually exclusive of being a member of a pension scheme. The employer must not provide the jobholder with an opt-out form directly, unless the employer also administers its own pension scheme.

For example, when providing the relevant information to an eligible jobholder who has just been auto-enrolled, an employer should not include an opt-out form as part of that information. The employer should only go as far as telling the jobholder from where they can obtain an opt-out form.

We as payroll providers cannot and will not advise any client on which scheme they should use. We can provide link to TPR and inform of Nest and Smart pension schemes being free but the choice must be made by the employer and they should seek professional pension help if required.