1. Workplace pension due
diligence
The Choices taskforce of the Friends of Auto Enrolment proudly
presents……
Henry Tapper
Director First Actuarial
Founder Pension PlayPen
2. Who will provide choice?
Source ; NEST Insight 2015
Our support is focussed on accountants and payroll agents using commercial software
3. What the Pensions Regulator says
If you offer a solution that links to one or more
specific pension schemes
(e.g. the payroll software is set up to link best with a
specific scheme)…..
you should make your client aware that there may
be other pension schemes available that could be
more appropriate for their staff.
If you don’t do this, there’s a risk that you could be
seen to be restricting an employer’s ability to
actively choose their own pension scheme.
4. Informed choice reduces capacity issues
Old way – CSV file
• Manual intervention
• Security issues
• Time challenging
New way - API technology -
• Touch of a button
• Secure
• Using common data standards
The industry should aim for 50% of data transfers to
be by APIs by the end of 2016
5. Things can go wrong
The majority of propositions we research are not offered on our platform. None of the above passed our due diligence
7. For your information!
.
The Choices Taskforce of Friends of Auto-Enrolment have produced two important documents
How to choose a pension
A Choices Factsheet
Thanks to
David Stripp/ Liz Cole/Andrew Evans/David Rich/Jon Parker/Richard Hulbert/Jerry McGahan
With help from Neil Esslemont
Henry.tapper@pensionplaypen.com
Editor's Notes
No one ever said that Payroll would need to become expert at pensions. Pensions are complicated and choosing a pension for your staff is an activity that should, according to the Regulator, be conducted only with “skill and knowledge”. The Office of Fair Trading concluded that SMEs and Micros do not have this skill and knowledge; when it came to workplace pensions they said they had seldom encountered such weak purchasers.
So employers need help in choosing pensions but they are not getting it.
In this presentation I will explain why payroll software providers and the agents that use it are being called upon to provide advice on pensions and particularly who the employer should use as the qualifying workplace pension provider.
I will explain the risks to payroll in assuming this function and how these risks can be outsourced to a trusted third party.
Pension PlayPen is a digital service that allows employers to choose the pension that is right for them and to have that decision documented for posterity. It is available to software providers at a price of £99 per usage which can be borne within the pricing of the module or charged directly to the customer.
We know of three potential candidates to provide pension advice to employers, Financial Advisers, accountants and payroll operatives.
IFAs believe they have the skills to do the job but are primarily interested in existing clients and are unlikely to be used by SMEs and Micros, according to the findings of NEST
Accountants are expected to deliver advice by employers but consider themselves ill equipped to do so and they are deeply reluctant to get involved.
Payroll see themselves as knowledgeable about auto-enrolment and uniquely, they see auto-enrolment as an opportunity and not a threat. Unsurprisingly it is payroll that is likely to be the key to auto-enrolment’s support going forward.
Payroll seem happy to step up to the plate, as they have done on RTI. But unlike RTI auto-enrolment is not just about data, it is about the investment of substantial chunks of payroll for anything up to forty years.
The expectation that payroll will feel happy to advise on that is a dangerous one!