Personal Accounts will undergo a soft launch, the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA) has confirmed.
As Employee Benefits reported in December 2008, a volunteer group of employers will be invited to enrol employees into Personal Accounts in low numbers, ahead of its formal launch in 2012.
A spokeswoman for PADA said it is standard with a project of this magnitude to test it works before launching. “This is a normal part of our schedule as we move towards 2012. It is standard with any project to test it out,” she said.
Duties on employers to automatically enrol employees into pensions will be phased in in three batches after 2012.
Selected larger employers will be first, based on PAYE payroll data, followed by medium and then smaller employers.†
According to guidance published by the Department for Work and Pensions, the exact dates have yet to be determined.
Up to 1 million employers are expected to use Personal Accounts to meet their obligations to enrol staff into a pension scheme after 2012.
To see how Employee Benefits broke the news in December click here.