NEST welcomes confirmation that restrictions will be lifted

Following the Pensions Minister's written statement today confirming that the restrictions on NEST will be lifted in April 2017, Tim Jones, NEST's chief executive, says:

'This is welcome and timely confirmation that the restrictions on contributions and transfers will be removed by 2017, particularly with automatic enrolment now starting to affect medium and smaller employers. Removing the cap on contributions by April 2017 means that the cap will be gone before minimum contributions increase from their current level (2 per cent) to 5 per cent.

'That not only simplifies things for employers, but also helps NEST members in building up their pots in the longer term. NEST remains critical to delivering the automatic enrolment policy, fulfilling its role as the provider with a public service obligation to be open to any employer to use. We now have over 1.5 million members and are working with around 9,000 employers.’

Key facts about NEST:

The government is currently introducing reforms that mean employers will have to automatically enrol most of their workers into a workplace pension scheme that meets or exceeds certain standards. They’ll also need to make a minimum contribution for many of these workers.
NEST, which was established by government as part of these reforms, is a national defined contribution workplace pension scheme available to all employers to use to meet their new duties.
It is designed around the needs of people who are largely new to pension saving, with clear communications, low charges and easy online tools and services. It is run as a trust-based scheme, on a not-for-profit basis, and the trustee has a legal duty to act in its members’ interests.
NEST has a public service obligation to accept any employer (whatever their size) who wants to use the scheme to meet their duties, as a sole scheme or alongside other provision.

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