The Pensions Regulator’s fifth automatic enrolment annual commentary and analysis report highlights the success of automatic enrolment (AE) to date. It shows how it will continue to roll out across the UK for more than 700,000 existing employers this year, as well as new businesses in the years to come.
The report contains upper and lower estimates of the numbers of new employers expected to have pension duties until the start of 2020. It shows how TPR predicts that around 73% of all small businesses, and nearly half of micro businesses, will have eligible staff.
The estimates demonstrate how automatic enrolment will continue to reverse the decline in workplace saving. In 2012, 55% of staff were saving into a workplace pension and by 2016 that figure had increased to 78%.
Today’s report shows that by the end of March this year, around seven million staff had been automatically enrolled by around 500,000 employers.
TPR’s Director of Automatic Enrolment Darren Ryder urged anyone setting up a business to make sure they are ready to comply with the law so that their staff receive the pensions they are entitled to.
He said: “Saving for retirement is becoming the social norm and the success of automatic enrolment is playing a key role in this shift. Our figures show that new businesses will continue this trend as they ensure workers are enrolled into a workplace pension.
“Automatic enrolment is now simply part of running a business and from October, as soon as employers take on staff for the first time, they will have duties. More than half of these new businesses will need to set up a pension scheme so that staff can begin saving.
“The job of implementing AE is not complete and we are not complacent. We will be continuing to help steer hundreds of thousands of employers through their workplace pension duties. Those setting up a business should visit our website to find all the information required.”
To help business advisers, TPR has also published expected numbers of employers due to carry out re-enrolment. Re-enrolment must be completed every three years.
Staff must be assessed and those who opted out initially must be put back into a pension scheme. By the end of this year, 12,000 employers are due to have completed re-enrolment.
While compliance with the law remains high, TPR’s report also highlights where TPR has acted to tackle non compliance.
For the first time, a small minority of employers received County Court Judgments for failing to pay their AE fines.
TPR also began employer spot checks across the country to check employers are meeting their duties.
Full report automatic enrolment annual commentary and analysis report
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