Policy News Journal - 2016-17

The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals ……………………………………………………………Policy News Journal

save for their retirement, so that they have a dignified standard of living and that meets their expectations about how they may wish to live for those 20 years…

…Automatic enrolment is not a one-off event, it truly is changing the landscape of saving on a daily basis.”

This is just a snippet from one of the posts on The Pensions Regulator’s new blog which details interesting updates and comments from their senior staff. The latest posts also include:

 executive director for policy Andrew Warwick-Thompson welcoming TPR’s new powers to regulate master trusts  chief executive Lesley Titcomb talking about the challenges of protecting pension schemes in a changing environment.

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PPI auto enrolment research for DWP review 15 November 2016

Research which looks at the effect of removing the qualifying earnings bands and earnings trigger from auto enrolment has been published.

NOW Pensions commissioned the (Pensions Policy Institute) PPI to model a selection of scenarios that look at the effect of removing the qualifying earnings bands and removing the earnings trigger, in preparation for the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) automatic enrolment review in 2017. The analysis is designed to help improve the discussion and debate on the automatic enrolment thresholds. The research does not make recommendations as to the appropriate direction of future policy, but is designed to provide independent evidence to allow policy development to be well informed.

Report Summary

In 2017 there will be a review of automatic enrolment. Although a number of aspects that were to be included have already been addressed, it is possible that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will expand the remit to include other elements, such as the earnings trigger and the qualifying earnings band.

Analysis of the employed population from the Labour Force Survey identifies the number and the nature of people that will be affected by the removal of the earnings trigger and earnings band on contributions. Specifically:

 3.3 million individuals would become eligible for automatic enrolment if the earnings trigger was removed.  All members of an occupational pension scheme could be affected by an increase to minimum contribution levels.  77% of employees earning less than the trigger income are women.  Over 50% of part-time workers earn less than the trigger income, and 81% of part-time workers are women.  70% of people are married at State Pension age (SPa) and household income will reflect this.  Over 40% of employees earning less than the trigger income are in receipt of child benefit.  A full time worker earning the national living wage and making auto enrolment minimum contributions can expect a pension pot of £33,100 at retirement. But, if contributions were made on every pound of earnings their pot would increase by 87% and total £62,200.  For somebody who takes a break to look after children from aged 26 to 32, works part time until 54 and then goes back to work full time, the uplift is greater. If contributions were made on every pound of salary then their pension pot would increase from £11,400 to £21,400 – an 86% increase. However, this would increase even further to £33,200 if the auto enrolment trigger were removed, a 190% increase on the current situation.  For those with two part time jobs removing qualifying earnings would increase their pension pot by 140% from £20,800 to £49,700. Remove the earnings trigger and their pension pot would be boosted by up to 200%. Currently part-time workers miss out twice as a result of the qualifying earnings calculation. 4.4 million part- time workers earning less than £10,000 are women.

PPI’s modelling reveals :

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