Pensions insight
Answering questions
The Pensions Regulator outlines the support and resources it offers to employers, advisers and payroll professionals
W e work hard to ensure we provide appropriate messaging for the many audiences involved in automatic enrolment, whether they’re small or large employers, accountants or payroll professionals. The number of small and micro employers reaching their duties start date and making their declaration of compliance each month continues to grow. This year more than 750,000 employers will see their workplace pension duties come into effect. Accordingly, our communications continue to focus on the large volume of small and micro employers approaching their staging date as well as the growing numbers of employers approaching re- enrolment. Letters, emails, social media, speaking events, advertising campaigns, webinars and a plethora of tools and information on our website are all in the mix. The questions we get asked at events and via our customer support centre are wide- ranging, from the basic ‘what is automatic enrolment?’ question to technical payroll software queries. The most common queries are on how the duties apply to single directors, when a pension scheme needs to be in place, and communicating to staff about postponement. Advisers also have queries around which qualifying earnings are included in automatic enrolment. If your client is not sure if they have to put any of their staff into a pension for automatic enrolment, they can use our duties checker to quickly find out.
Feedback received from advisers We have an ongoing dialogue with pension and payroll software and service providers. Feedback we have received is that they need time to prepare for changes in order to update their systems and software and to communicate with their clients. Anecdotally, we also know that business advisers’ main concerns are around their clients expecting them do everything for them, and at the last minute, followed by not having enough knowledge to support their clients through automatic enrolment. We have provided new guidance covering this on our website. ...clients expecting them do everything for them, and at the last minute... If your client is late complying or thinks they might be, they should tell us about it straight away. Our policy is that employers should take reasonable steps to put all workers back in the position they would have been in if they had complied on time. The employer should not profit from their mistake. Giving answers We have recently added a suite of animations for business advisers so they can get a quick understanding of information they will need to help their clients. There are animations on: ● A business adviser’s role in helping clients to choose a pension scheme ● Using our duties checker online tool for automatic enrolment ● Introduction to payroll for automatic enrolment ● Choosing a pension scheme for automatic enrolment ● Introduction to re-enrolment.
In addition, we also hold live webinars where we can receive immediate feedback from business advisers. This allows us to tailor our communications month on month with up to date information. The webinars themselves contain lots of nuggets of useful information; for example, the webinar ‘Supporting your clients through automatic enrolment’ answers sixty questions from a variety of business advisers. Re-enrolment Over the course of 2017, increasing numbers of payroll professionals will start to be involved in re-enrolment. We are aware that some of these professionals may not have been involved with automatic enrolment when it initially rolled out and so are ‘new’ to automatic enrolment. We know how important it is to harness the help of the payroll industry to reach employers with key information about how re-enrolment affects them. Around two thirds of small and micro employers will have a payroll bureau doing their payroll for them, representing a key channel to communicate with our vast employer audience. We have online information aimed at employers and business advisers to help them to quickly understand what they need to do for re-enrolment, including a downloadable ‘essential guide’. Have a look and familiarise yourself with what we are telling your clients. n Resources The Pensions Regulator has information specifically for business advisers on their website – go to www.tpr.gov.uk/business- advisers. To access a range of resources for advisers, including animations, examples of employer letters, links to webinars, and more – go to www.tpr.gov.uk/supporting- resources.
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Issue 30 | May 2017
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
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