Zurich Corporate Savings has hailed its implementation of the pensions auto-enrolment reforms for large employers as a success, after doubling the number of members contributing to its workplace pensions in just twelve months.
The news comes on the first anniversary of the introduction of the reforms to enrol workers automatically into a company pension, and relates to ZCS’s implementation of the new rules for larger employers, who were the first required to comply with the legislation.
ZCS has successfully implemented auto-enrolment for around sixty of those companies with the earliest staging dates and has experienced lower than anticipated opt-outs from scheme members, with an average opt-out rate of 7%.
Simon Foster, Head of Corporate Life and Pensions, UK and International Savings, Zurich Insurance, said:
“It has been widely reported that the roll-out of auto-enrolment has presented significant challenges for employers, trustees, employee benefit consultants and pensions providers. We can vouch for that being the case, however, the reforms represent an opportunity for those insurers who are well-prepared and we have delivered successfully for our largest clients. We are very pleased with our achievements so far and look forward to implementing more schemes for our clients as we demonstrate increasing capacity.
“Our work continues as more companies need to implement the rules and in 2014 it is the turn of medium to smaller businesses. As they have fewer resources in place to enrol their staff, it is crucial that the process is made as simple and straightforward as possible for them.
“We have learned a lot during the last 12 months, and our auto-enrolment process has become increasingly efficient. This means that a far higher proportion of our implementation resources will be available for new business in 2014. In contrast to some providers, we are fortunate in not having the challenge of implementing auto-enrolment services across many hundreds of small schemes distributed across numerous legacy platforms.
“We have also made strong progress in the development of new solutions for clients as recently demonstrated by the launches of our master trust, our new default fund and our new member engagement website.”
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