Are your pension re-enrolment duties coming up soon?
More than 1,200,00 employers have now successfully met their automatic enrolment duties and put nearly 10,000,000 staff into a workplace pension. However, automatic enrolment has ongoing tasks that must be completed to ensure employers continue to comply with the law, and staff continue to receive the pensions to which they are entitled.
Every three years, employers must put certain staff back into a pension scheme. This is called ‘re-enrolment’. Your pension re-enrolment duties must be carried out approximately three years after your automatic staging date. Employers must complete re-enrolment which means identifying staff that may need to be re-enrolled into the pension scheme. This may include staff that have previously opted-out of the pension. Even if you have no staff to re-enrol, you will need to complete a re-declaration of compliance to tell The Pensions Regulator that you have met your duties. Many employers are now coming up to the 3 year anniversary now.
Your re-enrolment duties:
* Choose your re-enrolment date from within a six-month window, which starts three months before the third anniversary of your automatic enrolment staging date and ends three months after it.
* Assess your staff. On your chosen re-enrolment date, you will need to assess certain staff to work out if you need to put them back into your pension scheme. Do this on your re-enrolment date.
* Write to staff that you have re-enrolled. Do this within 6 weeks of your re-enrolment date.
* Complete your re-declaration of compliance. Do this within 5 months of the third anniversary of your staging date.
Most employers are aware and understand that ongoing duties, but a small minority who fail to meet ongoing duties will risk financial penalties.
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