Policy News Journal - 2015-16

Adverts fronted by Dragons’ Den star and entrepreneur Theo Paphitis will be broadcast across the country. They will tell smaller employers and their staff that automatic enrolment is right around the corner. Over 47,000 large and medium-sized employers have already completed the process of automatically enrolling their workers. The focus has now shifted to the 1.3 million small and micro firms that will have to offer their staff a workplace pension between now and 2018.

Minister of State for Pensions, Dr Ros Altmann said:

“With more than 5 million people automatically enrolled into a workplace pension, we have made great strides forward in a short space of time, but there is still much hard work to do.

The switch to small and micro firms brings with it new challenges, which is why we’re working closely with business organisations and others to ensure they have the right level of support at every step of the way to help them through the process.

Our long-term economic plan gives working people the chance to get on at every stage of their lives. This includes the dignity of a job, the security of a paycheque and a decent, well-earned retirement.”

Last month small and micro employers of between one and 49 workers started to automatically enroll their staff into a workplace pension. By the time the process is complete in 2018, up to 9 million workers will be newly saving or saving more in workplace pensions.

Automatic enrolment update from The Pensions Regulator 8 July 2015

Do you know when you’re allowed to give your clients advice on automatic enrolment and where you cross the line into regulated financial advice?

Read on for an update from The Pensions Regulator:

What’s my role as a business adviser?

We’re hosting a free webinar for accountants, bookkeepers, payroll professionals and other business advisers at 2pm on 14 July. We’ll tell you all about the areas where advisers have told us they want more information, including:  Assessing and enrolling staff – who has duties and who is exempt?  Your role in helping your clients choose a pension scheme – how you can help your clients and what you can and can’t do. We’ll also give you hints and tips on some of the steps that may take a little more time, or which you may be less familiar with, such as setting up your clients’ payroll, or sole director companies. This will be followed by a live Q&A session with our resident experts.

Register for the webinar here .

Our drive towards simplifying our language

This is to give notice that we are striving to simplify the language we use on our website and in our publications for small and micro employers. We are also planning to make it easier for employers to identify whether they have any duties. These changes to our website are ongoing, but significant changes are planned for early Autumn.

View our updated video on director exemptions

Find out if your director clients are exempt from the automatic enrolment duties. Click on this link . The update is to give additional guidance on how to tell us your client or your company is exempt.

If your clients receive a letter which includes their staging date and you believe that automatic enrolment duties don’t apply to them, because they are a director only company, you or the employer need to let us know .

Annual Report and Accounts 2014-2015 published

Some automatic enrolment highlights:

CIPP Policy News Journal

25/04/2016, Page 323 of 453

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