Pension Auto Enrolment

New pension regulations came into force on 1 October 2012 that mean every employer with at least one member of staff has a duty to enrol eligible employees into a workplace pension scheme and contribute towards it.

Workers who qualify for a workplace pension

• work in the UK
• are not already in a suitable workplace pension scheme
• are at least 22 years old, but under State Pension age
• earn more than £10,000 a year for the tax year 2019-20.

The new duties were rolled out to employers over a five-year period – beginning in October 2012 with the largest employers – and since early 2018 applies to all UK employers.

If you are employing staff for the first time, your legal duties for automatic enrolment begin on the day your first member of staff starts work.  This is known as your duties start date. 

Payroll plays a significant role in the Automatic Enrolment process and it is very important that your payroll software has the functionality that will deliver the information required. Here at DTE Payroll Outsourcing, we provide outsourced solutions to ensure you fulfil your obligations, including:

• Assessment – The initial assessment and the on-going assessment of your workforce to identify each employee’s worker category
• Postponement – The ability to process postponement and produce postponement letters. Once the postponement has ended, employee assessment will automatically take place
• Enrolment – Eligible employees are automatically enrolled into the pension scheme with minimum contributions rates
• Calculation – Automatically calculate pension contributions in line with your pension policy
• Communication – Providing the relevant communications for the category of worker including joining letters for employees being automatically enrolled
• Opt-in & Opt-out requests – Managing opt-in requests and opt-outs including the refund of contributions
• Submission – Data file transmissions to the pension provider
• Reports – Provision of reports for compliance purposes

This will provide a fully compliant solution to payroll for Auto Enrolment and will ease the additional workload Auto Enrolment will undoubtedly cause to each and every employer.

Should you wish to discuss your payroll and/or auto enrolment requirements further, please contact Sarah Nicholson, Head of Payroll Outsourcing, on 0161 767 1213.