Displaying items by tag: Autoenrolment

The Government has confirmed that it intends to move forward with major reforms to automatic enrolment pensions.

The government has confirmed that, after its latest review, auto-enrolment thresholds will be held at their current levels for the next year.

A total of over £114bn has been invested in Automatic Enrolment pensions by nearly 11m people since they were first launched 10 years ago, new government figures published today show.

Just over one in four workplace pension savers (26%) fear their pension pot will fail to provide enough to live on at retirement, according to a new report from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA).

An MP has proposed plans to lower the age for auto-enrolment from 22 to 18 and to extend the scheme to lower and part-time earners.

Major workplace pensions provider NOW: Pensions is to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and an expanded sustainable investment strategy in a major shift towards ESG investments.

One-in-twenty workers are being ‘under-enrolled’ in company pension schemes by receiving less than the minimum legal contributions, or no contributions at all, according to new research.

Almost £10bn was transferred out of defined benefit pensions in the final quarter of 2019, according to official data.

Almost 9 in 10 of eligible employees (88%, 19.2m people) have saved for retirement through their workplace pension: an increase from 55% in 2012 when automatic-enrolment began, DWP figures have said.

However, pension participation among self-employed people continued to fall from 21% in 2009/10 to 14% in 2018/19.

The annual total amount saved for eligible employees was £98.4bn in 2019, an increase of £5.3bn from 2018.

£40.5bn was saved into public sector schemes (41%), with £57.9bn (59%) saved into private sector schemes.DWP data from December 2019 showed 5.44m people were employed in the public sector (16%) compared to 27.55m (84%) people in the private sector.

Following the release of the data, Hargreaves Lansdown shared concerns about the pension savings figures for the self-employed.

Nathan Long, interim head of policy at Hargreaves Lansdown said: “The self-employed continue to be precariously placed with just a handful choosing to save into a pension, showing the existing incentives just don’t resonate. The Government will also be acutely aware that 41% of all pension contributions go to public sector employees that represent less than a fifth of all workers.”

The Pensions Regulator has so far issued 115,459 auto-enrolment fixed penalty notices since the start of the workplace pension scheme in 2012.