Helping you stay compliant with automatic enrolment compliance

At the end of last month, The Pension Regulator (TPR) published its latest compliance bulletin – and warned employers to make sure they are complying with their ongoing auto enrolment duties.

The Regulator has carried out a series of in-depth compliance inspections over the last six months, looking at the records of nearly 1.5 million UK workers, and found a number of errors in pension administration.

The majority of employers meet their auto enrolment responsibilities successfully. However, the report serves as not only a warning of the danger of not complying with the law, but also a reminder that support is available if you need a helping hand with your pension administration.

Most of the errors found by TPR were technical in nature, but they often give evidence of more serious non-compliance issues. The mistakes typically found can be very costly for employers: they usually have to make backdated payments to their employees to correct incorrect contributions, as well as facing a financial penalty.

The report identifies the most common errors made by employers as the incorrect use of salary thresholds when assessing workers for auto enrolment, as well as issues with the backdating of contributions.

It’s worth remembering that at Smart Pension, we’re here to help you meet your auto enrolment duties. Our assessment tools allow you to assess workers with the certainty that the thresholds being used will correctly allow you to determine which workers to enrol. We can also make sure that workers receive the appropriate statutory communications when you provide us with a personal email address for your members. These steps will help make sure that you remain compliant with the law when it comes to your responsibilities as an employer.

If you’re struggling with your auto enrolment duties, we can also support you through our managed service, which is available for a small charge.

TPR’s report also stresses how it takes its role seriously and that it will take enforcement action against employers which do not comply with the legislation, or do not work with it to resolve problems swiftly when issues are identified. The Regulator has indicated that it will continue to engage with employers to ensure the ongoing compliance with automatic enrolment regulations.