Automatic enrolment – registering your qualifying pension scheme

This is the third in a series of short blogs about automatic enrolment, a new law designed to encourage people to save for their retirement.

1 – When is my staging date?

2 – What about my existing pension scheme?

Auto enrolment will require all employers to enrol their employees into a workplace pension scheme, if they are not already a member of a qualifying scheme.

It is designed to overcome the perennial problem of employees not joining their workplace pension schemes when these are offered, simply because they do not sign up to receive these valuable benefits.

Registering your qualifying pension scheme

Once you have identified that your existing pension scheme is qualifying, it needs to be registered with The Pensions Regulator.

This is done by following an online process on The Pensions Regulator website at www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk.

This registration process has to be completed once employers have satisfied their duties for the first time, which is typically within one month of the staging date.

In order to simplify payroll administration, it will be possible to bring your staging date forward. This will allow some employers to coincide their staging date with an existing pay review cycle or financial year end.

If you want to bring forward your staging date, you must let The Pensions Regulator know in writing at least one month before doing this. They are expected to provide an online form for bringing forward the staging date by the end of this year.

Your third automatic enrolment task is to register your qualifying pension scheme online with The Pensions Regulator.