Speaking on BBC radio this morning Barnett Waddingham consultant Malcolm McLean said:
“An established opt-out rate as low as 9% is very encouraging and if it were to continue at or anywhere near that level would represent a major success for the policy - probably way beyond the Government’s or indeed anyone else’s expectations.
“But it is early days and as the report itself acknowledges the analysis is not based on a fully representative sample of employers. The results cannot be applied to the whole population of employers particularly as medium and smaller employers will have different characteristics to larger employers, such as lower existing participation levels in workplace pensions.
“It also needs to be borne in mind that the reference to opt-outs applies specifically to those employees expressing a wish to come out of the scheme in the first month after having been enrolled and does not include those “ceasing active memberships” in the second or subsequent months afterwards. There is some anecdotal evidence not referred to in the report that including that latter group could materially alter the figures.
“It is interesting, but perhaps not surprising, to note that opt-out rates were higher among those aged 50 and over than for other age groups. For six employers that were able to provide full breakdowns by age group, opt-out rates for those aged 50 and over were between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than those of other age groups. In one typical example, the under 30s opt-out rate was 8 per cent, compared with 9 per cent of 30-49 year olds and 15 per cent of those aged 50 and over.
“From such a small sample it would be unwise to draw too many definitive conclusions but overall auto-enrolment appears to be heading in the right direction and is certainly not the disaster many critics suggested it might be.”
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