The introduction of automatic enrolment has revolutionised the way workers in the UK will save for retirement. But it's also opened up new opportunities for accountants and other types of corporate service providers.
The introduction of automatic enrolment has revolutionised the way workers in the UK will save for retirement. But it’s also opened up new opportunities for accountants and other types of corporate service providers.
Over the next five years, roughly 1.2 million employers will start enrolling workers into pension schemes and they’ll need specialist help to make sure they have the right processes in place.
Automatic enrolment is an ideal opportunity to expand your corporate client base. While pensions used to be the business of advisers, with the introduction of the new duties it’s also up to accountants, as trusted providers, to help employers comply.
Here are a few questions you should be asking:
• Have your clients built the costs of automatic enrolment into their business plan?
• Do your clients know what they need to do to comply with the new duties and when?
• If your clients have existing pension providers, have they checked they can help with automatic enrolment?
• Are their current payroll systems suitable?
One thing you can do now is start pointing your clients towards the right kind of help. Ask them to visit The Pensions Regulator’s website and NEST’s website for guidance.
Our work with employers who’ve already experienced automatic enrolment has taught us that your clients should start getting ready at least six months before their staging date. If they need to make changes to their processes it’ll take even longer to prepare.
Automatic enrolment doesn’t finish when a client reaches their staging date. It’s an ongoing responsibility that they’ll need to include in their day-to-day business, much like payroll. Get involved with your clients’ planning processes and make sure they’re on track.
NEST’s delegated access service
If you currently provide payroll services to your clients, you could also use NEST’s delegated access service. You can expand your business services by offering to manage your clients’ accounts and you don’t have to be FCA-regulated to do it.
Using delegated access, you can offer to take on varying amounts of the administrative workload from employers, depending on what they want you to deal with. Full access allows delegates to set up an employer account, enrol members and make payments as well as manage schedules and communications for workers.
To find out more about NEST’s delegated access:
• watch our video demo
• catch up on our webinar for accountants
• take a look at how employers can integrate with our systems and use payroll to help with automatic enrolment here
• get our latest communications for accountants, advisers and payroll, by signing up to our e-newsletter
Ways to use NEST
NEST’s scheme is legally compliant for automatic enrolment and our award-winning default approach was created to meet the needs of our members.
NEST is flexible enough to be used for the whole workforce. Employers have been using us in different ways:
• as a sole scheme for all workers
• for a particular group of workers alongside an existing scheme
• as an entry level scheme where the existing scheme has a waiting period
• as a base scheme to comply with employer duties, while using another scheme to pay any additional contributions
• as a catch-all scheme for workers who don’t voluntarily join an existing scheme.
Visit our website today to find out how NEST can help you help your clients.