
Over the last few months hundreds of thousands of small businesses have received a letter from the Pensions Regulator about auto enrolment. This represents the biggest change to pensions for a generation. Around 45,000 employers will need to enrol workers into a workplace pension this year.
According to a recent survey by NEST, a national trust-based pension scheme, although 91 per cent of small employers and 85 per cent of micro businesses know about the changes just 18 per cent of small and micro employers feel they completely understand what it mean for their business. NEST was set up by the government as part of the automatic enrolment workplace pension reforms. It?s run on a not-for-profit basis by an independent Trustee, NEST Corporation, and has a legal obligation to be open to any employer to use for automatic enrolment. Total assets under management are over ?364mIt currently has around 1.9m members and there are around 11,000 employers using NEST, plus over 850 self-employed members. Total assets under management are over ?364m. The organisation?s research also suggests that smaller employers will increasingly turn to accountants for help and advice in the coming year, but, it warns, it?s not currently clear whether accountants are as prepared as they may want to be for an increase in demand. However, according to experts there are a few simple things that SMEs and small businesses can do. ?The first thing you should look at is when you need to auto enrol your workers,? said a NEST spokesman. ?This information will be in your letter from the Pensions Regulator, or you can visit their website and find out. Once you know this you can plan out your approach to enrolling your workers.? Read more about auto-enrolment:- SMEs cannot afford to be non-compliant with auto-enrolment in 2015
- Auto-enrolment: Top five tips for small firms
- Are employers asleep or simply in denial over auto-enrolment?
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