Small Business challenge to deliver new workplace pensions
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) are encouraging SME owners to make sure that they are aware of the latest auto-enrolment milestone.
On 1st June, up to 14,000 businesses with fewer than 30 employees were faced with the Government’s new pension rules.
These smaller firms have now reached their staging date to automatically enrol their employees in a workplace pension scheme.
Last year, it was reported that a third of small businesses who had 60 employees or more were not ready for their auto-enrolment process. The FSB fears that the same problem is going to strike this current batch of small businesses.
‘‘The extension of auto-enrolment to hundreds of thousands of small businesses presents a major challenge. Awareness of the impending changes has picked up, but many have still yet to put into place plans to meet their duties. Small business owners are not pension experts and a significant number will not have any staff saving into an existing workplace pension scheme ,’’ said John Allen, national chairman, FSB.
‘‘Compliance with auto-enrolment must be low cost and entail minimal administrative burden. We still remain concerned that this won’t be the case for many small employers, and that many will face additional administrative as well as payroll costs. It is crucially important that businesses deal with this sooner, and do not leave it until the last minute,’’ continued Allen.
Petaurum Solutions’ Comment
Complying with complex Auto Enrolment obligations can be a daunting prospect for many small and micro-sized business. Choosing a cost effective, long-term implementation solution is critical for these businesses to ensure they do not become swamped with the processing requirements and responsibilities that Auto Enrolment can bring. Therefore, for businesses considering their solution, focus should not only be on the pension scheme, but also on how it will be administered, methods to communicate, impacts on systems and data collection processes along with any HR and Legal changes may you need to make.
Our Defaqto 5* quality Carey Master Trust Pension Scheme, comes with best in class assessment and communication software and is part of our SME specific, competitively priced end-to-end solution that will take care of the above, leaving you free to manage your business safe in the knowledge that your Auto Enrolment obligations are in professional hands. Want to know more? Then feel free to download our info pack here, or contact us to secure your PAE future.
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