Having said that you may find it helpful even if you don’t fall in to the exact target range and it is worth taking a look at as you plan towards Auto Enrolment . Whatever your size, there is a lot you will need to do in order to be ready for automatic enrolment, so allow plenty of time to prepare.
COMPANIES ARE NOT LEAVING THEMSELVES ENOUGH TIME FOR AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT
26 June 2013
There are warnings that companies are not giving themselves enough time to prepare for auto enrolment (AE), which could leave them vulnerable to fines and even custodial sentences. Corporate Benefits Consulting director Allan Maxwell said that companies believe the process is straightforward and not difficult to do, when in actual fact, politicians have made it incredibly complicated. "The problem is there is so much detail. There are so many facets. These include assessing the workforce and working out how much each employee should contribute, who is in and who is out of the scheme. "Then there is the communication process with employees, the information that must be provided to them, what status they happen to be. There are very, very strict guidelines on this. "Everyone's focused on the 'day one staging date', and most don't realise that AE doesn't stop there, it's an on-going process. If you pay people weekly then you have to assess the workforce every week." There are potential penalties for companies that don't comply with the new rules, with small businesses of four of five staff likely to incur fines of £50 a day, with a hike to £5,000 a day for businesses with over 1,000 employees.
Maxwell said: "While I don't think the regulator wants to levy these fines, if people don't get their act together and figure out what they need to do, they may see themselves hit.
"Ultimately there is potential for custodial sentences too but these are probably a long way off."
There will be approximately 12,000 employers going through the process between April and June next year rising steeply between October to December 2015 when approximately 100,000 a month will go through the AE process.
CIPP SURVEY - AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT OPT-OUTS
28 June 2013
The CIPP is working in partnership with JLT Solutions to understand what the current opt-out rates are for employer provided pension schemes and to understand the reasons why employees opt out. The CIPP and JLT Solutions appreciate that you may not have all the data directly from your employees and would therefore ask that for some of the questions you use your best estimate based on anecdotal evidence, or evidence that you have gathered.
CIPP Policy News Journal
16/04/2014, Page 379 of 519
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