Morten Nilsson, CEO of NOW: Pensions said: “NOW: Pensions has always been a huge supporter of the master trust assurance framework and was one of the first providers to adopt it. We’ve since completed the framework three times and remain committed to it.
“We feel that while we work to resolve these historic issues and ensure that every scheme is up to date, it’s appropriate to withdraw from the list. We are confident that this work will be completed shortly. Providing our clients and members the best possible service remains our top priority.”
As one of the largest players in the auto enrolment market, NOW: Pensions has an open and ongoing dialogue with the regulator regarding all aspects of our scheme.
Largely as a result of NOW: Pensions’ change of third party administrator, it has experienced some delays processing contributions for a small percentage of clients. NOW: Pensions has kept The Pensions Regulator fully updated regarding these historic issues and accept that getting these schemes up to date has taken longer than it should due to the complexity of some of the cases, the poor quality data that was sometimes involved and the systems used.
Morten Nilsson continues: “We should have been more proactive in our communications with affected clients and members regarding these issues and apologise wholeheartedly to those we have let down. In this instance, we have fallen short of the standard of service we aim to provide.”
To prevent a re-occurrence of these issues, NOW: Pensions has invested, and continues to invest heavily in new systems, people and processes.
Over the past two years, it has been building a large internal operation out of its office in Nottingham and its own auto enrolment site to upload payroll files called the NOW: Pensions Gateway. This was launched for new clients at the end of last year.
This new system has been tailor made for auto enrolment and has been extremely well received by both employers and payroll bureaux who have praised it highly. It is much simpler to use, with stronger validations to prevent poor quality data getting into the system which can cause significant problems further down the line. Over the coming months NOW: Pensions aims to gradually move existing clients across to this new system.
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