not choose to take up free or competitively-priced payroll software products (that could better support them with AE), would be at risk of non-compliance if they are not able to identify which workers to automatically enrol or what the minimum level of contributions would be. Where employers do not use payroll that is suitable or do not have alternative software, then as part of our remit to educate and to enable employers to be able to meet their automatic enrolment duties, we will be making a tool available to them to assist them. This will be suitable for the very smallest employers and will allow them to know which of their employees to automatically enrol, what communications to send and what the right contributions are. The tool is expected to be available next Spring ahead of the first micro employers staging in June 2015. The tool will not be set up to integrate with other software systems or HMRC’s BPT - and its primary output will be tailored guidance rather than data. The tool is a further addition to the suite of existing tools we have made available to both educate and enable employers to comply – for example the staging date tool, the employer duties tool and the minimum contributions tool. It is not designed as a substitute for commercial products. We intend to invite software developers to a workshop later this year to share more detail and gather industry views. In the meeting, we will be particularly interested in how the market might more fully mitigate the risks that we are trying to manage. comprehensive suite of Test Data packs. This test data will be a modular series of multi- paycycle tests designed to cover a wide range of scenarios - intended to help software developers have confidence that employers who use their products can comply with the new automatic enrolment duties. The data will be produced in .pdf and .xls formats (using PAPDIS* standard data field definitions where appropriate) to make it easier for software testers to import. * PAPDIS is the Pensions & Payroll Data Interface Standard, an industry standard designed to allow payroll and middleware software to use a common data format for payroll to pension provider communications (eg to send data on pension contributions and enrolment of new members). For further information on the PAPDIS standard see www.papdis.org 2. TPR Test Data Suite – We are planning on publishing, in March 2015, a
Simplifying the automatic enrolment process to reduce employer burdens
2 November 2014
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has launched a consultation on proposals to further simplify the automatic enrolment process and reduce burdens on employers.
The proposed measures are intended to:
introduce an alternative quality requirement for defined benefits (DB) pension schemes simplify the requirements on employers regarding the provision of information about automatic enrolment to their employees create exceptions to the employer duties so that an employer is not required to enrol an employee into a workplace pension in certain situations.
The consultation closes on 9 January 2015.
CIPP comment The CIPP Policy Team will examine the detail of the consultation proposals, and will issue a survey to seek members’ views if appropriate.
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 350 of 521
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