‘It’s your turn now’ as 1.2 million UK employers start to meet their auto enrolment duties

• This week marks four years since auto enrolment was introduced to the UK.
• Around 230,000 employers have met their auto enrolment deadline since 2012.
• As auto enrolment enters its final phase the number of employers affected increases five-fold to 1.2 million in 18 months.
• At its peak, around 2,800 employers will be setting up a pension scheme every day.

This week marks four years since auto enrolment was introduced to the UK. In the last four years 230,000 employers have completed auto enrolment with their pension providers. Now small and micro employers come under the duty, with 1.2 million to meet their duties in the next 18 months.

Providers across the sector are preparing to support unprecedented numbers of employers in meeting their auto enrolment deadlines. NEST is already routinely seeing volumes of 800 employers a day sign up.

Paul Budgen, NEST’s director of business development commented on how employers can prepare:

‘While auto enrolment has been around for 4 years, it hasn’t reached the majority of UK employers. This year that changes. Chances are, if you’re an employer and haven’t set up a pension scheme yet then it’s your turn soon.

‘While it can be daunting, especially if like most UK employers you haven’t set up a pension before, it doesn’t have to be. The good news is many smaller employers have set up their scheme and they’re finding it straightforward. In fact, over 180,000 employers have already signed up to NEST, many ahead of their staging date. If you haven’t started your auto enrolment journey, then don’t worry. First things first, find out when you need to set up a scheme by. If you haven’t had your letter from The Pension Regulator you can find this out on their website and then plan everything else from there. There are lots of guides and help available, and schemes like NEST have introduced new functionality, such as integration with payroll, which really simplifies things.

Kevin Moore, Chief Executive of the Stepney City Farm, a small charity who already uses NEST, commented:

‘We knew auto enrolment was coming and it was important for us to offer a good workplace pension for our staff. At the same time we obviously thought about how complex it would be for us to introduce as we’re only a small team.

‘We needn’t have worried, NEST was really straightforward to set up and as it’s integrated with our payroll, it only takes the team a short while each month to do.’

Notes for editors

The information on the volume of all employers setting up their schemes in a single day has been calculated using the upper bound for the ‘all employers’ data as detailed in The Pension Regulator projections.