Welcome to your weekly update from the Allen & Overy Pensions team, covering all the latest legal and regulatory developments in the world of workplace pensions.
This week we cover topics including: Ten years of auto-enrolment; Pensions Academy: summary and recordings
Ten years of auto-enrolment
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published a blog post marking the tenth anniversary of auto-enrolment (AE). As well as noting the success of AE, it discusses the ongoing and future challenges to continuing that success. The post flags that TPR recently carried out in-depth compliance inspections of more than 20 large employers and found a number of common errors in calculating pension contributions and in communications. TPR is encouraging employers to ensure that they do not skip important steps in complying with their ongoing duties and urging them to comply with their re-enrolment responsibilities. TPR will shortly be launching a new campaign warning employers that it will spot non-compliance and take action where appropriate.
The blog post also highlights TPR’s support of initiatives aimed at improving savers’ pension knowledge. TPR encourages trustees to take action now to ensure they meet their pensions dashboards connection deadline (including consulting its dashboards guidance).
The government has marked the occasion with a press release celebrating past success and noting future developments such as pensions dashboards and mid-life MOTs. It also comments on possible future extensions of the regime, including abolishing the lower earnings limit for contributions and reducing the eligible age to 18.
Read TPR's blog post.
Read the press release.
Pensions Academy: summary and recordings
Thank you to those who joined our autumn Pensions Academy. You can find a summary of what was discussed and details of how to request a recording here. As a reminder, the topics we covered were:
Transfers: tricks, treats and traps for the unwary?
The introduction of red and amber flags was meant to help trustees identify points of concern with transfer requests and ensure that members got support from MoneyHelper where relevant – but there are glitches in the system and grey areas in the guidance. In our first session we discussed the tricky areas and how best to deal with them.
Pensions Dashboards – coming, ready or not
Chris Curry, Principal of the Pensions Dashboards Programme, met with us to give the inside track on dashboard developments, discuss risk areas and how schemes should be addressing them, and give tips on how trustees should be planning and preparing for implementation.
Legal update: remember, remember...
There’s been a stop/start feel to key pensions developments over the last couple of years, and it can be easy to lose track of where we’ve got to and what’s coming up. In this session, we went through what’s happening now and what to expect next.
