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How Auto Enrolment affects you?
It appears business owners are leaving their preparations for Auto Enrolment too late, with 90% of those with a staging date within the next 12 months saying they have not started planning.
To help bridge the gap between what business owners believe is needed to meet auto enrolment regulations and the reality of what is required, we’ve outlined the main points for you.
What are your responsibilities?
Auto Enrolment is designed to ensure all eligible employees are automatically put onto qualifying pension schemes with high enough contributions.
There are 33 new responsibilities for all UK businesses, these include:
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Providing a qualifying pension scheme for workers
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Communicating the changes to all employees
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Advising eligible jobholders that they have been enrolled and give them the option to opt out
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Automatically enrolling all eligible jobholders onto the scheme
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Paying employer contributions for eligible jobholders
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Registering with The Pensions Regulator – providing details of qualifying scheme and the number of people that you have automatically enrolled
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Processing any opt-in/opt-out requests
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Monitoring leavers, starters and casual employees, enrolling periodically as required
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Re-enrolling all employees every three years
Penalties for non-compliance
Failure to comply will result in a £400 penalty followed by an escalating daily fine of between £50 and £10,000, depending on your number of employees. In addition, failure to pay employer contributions will cost you between £5,000 and £50,000 and breaching your compliance duties could cost you £5,000 a day.
You can find out more at www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers
Preparation
It is important to ensure you understand auto enrolment now as well as the impact it will have on your business in the future. Every employer must act to fulfil their new legal duties for the new workplace pensions law.
You’ll need to:
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1. Know when to act (Find out your staging date).
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2. Assess your workforce
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3. Review your pension arrangement
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4. Communicate the changes to all your workers
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5. Automatically enrol your eligible job holders
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6. Register with The Pensions Regulator and Keep records
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7. Contribute to your workers’ pensions
Employees
120,000+
​
10,000+
500+
250+
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50-249
30-49
Below 30
New employers
Staging Date
October 2012
March 2013
November 2013
February 2014
April 2015
October 2015
April 2017
February 2018