All Pensions articles – Page 153
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Article
Squire Sanders launches pensions white paper
Squire Sanders has published a white paper on the key issues that affect the affordability of pension schemes.The law firm’s paper, Pensions in the age of austerity, draws upon a two-part independently commissioned survey of employers, actuaries, trustees and other pensions industry professionals.The three cultural aspects that respondents identified could ...
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Article
NAPF to reshape pensions council structure
The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has overhauled the structure of its two main policy-making councils to reflect changes in the pensions landscape and create a clearer focus on defined contribution (DC) pension schemes.The two new councils – Defined Benefit Council (DBC) and Defined Contribution Council (DCC) – will ...
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Article
Regulator consults on DC pension contributions
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has launched a consultation on the revised codes of practice on reporting late payment of contributions to defined contribution (DC) pension schemes.The consultation relates to its codes of practice for maintaining contributions, which aim to improve transparency and ensure that everyone involved in the flow of ...
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Article
Whitbread removes investment choice
Whitbread removed investment choice from its trust-based defined contribution (DC) pension scheme because of concerns that employees’ lack of understanding was putting them off pensions altogether.Speaking at the National Association of Pension Funds’ conference, Lesley Williams, group pensions director at Whitbread, said: “As trustees, we realised we were being unrealistic ...
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Article
High pension charges could cut income
Auto-enrolling employees into older-style pension schemes with high charges could lose up to 50% of their retirement income, according to research by the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School.The research, Caveat venditor: the brave new world of auto-enrolment should be governed by the principle of seller not buyer beware, examined ...
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Article
Reading Uni buys EAP with pensions savings
EXCLUSIVE: The University of Reading has used the savings made from introducing a pensions salary sacrifice arrangement to add an employee assistance programme (EAP) to its benefits package.The salary sacrifice arrangement was added to the university’s three pension schemes from 1 August, and has seen a take-up of 85%. The ...
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Article
BBC and E.On awarded PQM
The BBC, BASF, E.On and Age UK have been awarded the Pension Quality Mark (PQM) for their defined contribution (DC) pension schemes.The PQM recognises DC schemes with total contributions of at least 10%, with a minimum employer contribution of 6%. It also distinguishes pension schemes that are clearly communicated to ...
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Article
Orbit to move to DC pension for auto-enrolment
Orbit Group is to move its employees to a contract-based defined contribution (DC) pension scheme for all future pensions provision and has closed its defined benefit (DB) scheme to future accrual as part of its plans for auto-enrolment.The move followed a review of the landlord’s pensions strategy, which identified potential ...
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Article
Debenhams agrees pension recovery plan
Debenhams is to contribute £8.9 million each year until 2022 to restore two of its pension schemes to a fully funded position.The Debenhams Retirement Scheme and the Debenhams Executive Pension Plan, which closed to future accrual from 31 October 2006, showed a deficit of £57.3 million on 1 September 2012, ...
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Article
ABF reviews pensions ahead of auto-enrolment
Associated British Foods (ABF) has appointed a default fund provider as parts of its pension scheme review ahead of auto-enrolment.From October 2012, the scheme will offer its members flexible target date funds as the default option, which will be managed by investment management firm AllianceBernstein.The international food, ingredients and retail ...
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Article
Hargreaves Lansdown adds bonus to funds
EXCLUSIVE: Hargreaves Lansdown has introduced a 0.5% loyalty bonus on over 1,000 of its investment funds, which will benefit 120,000 members of its self-invested personal pensions (Sipp).Of these, 4,734 are employees who use one of 47 Hargreaves Lansdown workplace savings platforms, which have been set up in the last two ...
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Article
50p pensions compliance product
A software system designed to help financial advisers provide essential pension compliance to the 968,545 micro firms in the UK employing fewer than 10 people has been launched by JargonFree founder Steve Bee.JargonFree Pensions Compliance is a middleware product that will allow even the smallest firms in the UK to ...
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Article
Asda focuses on auto-enrolment administration
Auto-enrolment planning must include a focus on the administration systems needed to run a scheme, warned Jane Earnshaw, head of reward at Asda, during a session at Employee Benefits Live.Asda is due to go live with its auto-enrolment scheme on Monday, 1 October.Earnshaw advised organisations that are starting to make ...
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Article
Informa educates staff on pensions
A robust communications strategy will help employees make informed decisions about pensions, said Thomas Humphris, head of office HR and UK reward at publishing firm Informa.Speaking at Employee Benefits Live on 25 September, Humphris said that it was important that communication with employees about the auto-enrolment changes was easier to ...
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Article
Employers need longer to plug pension deficits
Organisations will need an extra three years to plug rising pension scheme deficits, taking the average repayment period to 11 years, according to research by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).The research, which covered 98 recent defined benefit (DB) pension scheme valuations, found that, there will be a reversal of previous years’ ...
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Case Studies
Golden Gates Housing Trust pilots RTI
Working with its payroll provider, Software for People, the social housing provider completed the RTI process in April after volunteering to take part in HMRC’s pilot scheme involving 10 employers.Sarah Moorcroft, finance and administration offi cer at Golden Gates, says the data cleanse and system updates required for RTI have ...
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Opinion
Catherine Wilson: Legal issues around auto-enrolment
Under the new rules, employers will need to keep additional records for compliance purposes. These can be either electronic or paper-based, but they must be legible and easily reproduced.Additional information may be needed, such as dates of birth for casual workers, and some data-cleansing may also be required.Employers should review ...
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Opinion
Sarah Ozanne: Legal issues around auto-enrolment
New employee protections have come into place that apply to all employers, regardless of their staging date. It is notclear that employers are generally engaged on this issue.The auto-enrolment regulations are complex and do not fit well with other pension regulations. Some amendments have now been made to align existing ...
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Opinion
Martin Freeman: Payroll issues around auto-enrolment
Employers should be proactive and get on the front foot rather than waiting around for press releases from their payroll provider on what it will be offering.Go to the provider and say: ‘This is what I am going to need, this is how I want to operate: can you help?’Get ...
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Opinion
David Woodward: Payroll issues around auto-enrolment
Many employers have needed to make changes to their payroll systems and to consider whether their payroll provider can offer what is needed to comply with auto-enrolment regulations.One of our customers has been diligent in its evaluation of the options, thorough in its planning activity and engaged theright professionals at ...