Friends Life is today announcing the first details of its automatic enrolment solution, an online purpose built hub designed to help employers meet their duties under the new reforms, which come into effect from October 2012.
The hub, designed to work with our existing platforms, will collect information from employers' payroll and HR systems and assess it against the new auto-enrolment rules to determine what pension arrangements and contributions need to be made for each individual employee.
The Friends Life hub will enable employers to enrol eligible employees into a new or existing Friends Life pension scheme or a combination of both, aiding employers where different pension scheme options would suit different employees based on their roles and salary levels. The hub will:
Decide which employees are eligible for scheme membership and contributions at each pay period, and those that are not, providing reasons for ineligibility;
Re- enrol any employees who previously opted out after the three year period;
Allow ineligible employees to voluntarily opt in via an online portal;
Produce analysis and management information for employers so they can fulfil their reporting duties, including regulatory requirements;
Provide online access to correspondence and information that employers and employees will need in order to understand the new scheme and what it means to them.
Colin Williams, Managing Director of Corporate Benefits at Friends Life, said:
"Making auto-enrolment work will require employers to review their employee base for eligibility and contribution levels at every pay date. This will be a complex task, particularly for companies with large numbers of employees, or who pay wages weekly, have multiple payroll and HR systems or which have employees whose pay varies.
"Our hub will ease the burden for employers by acting as the link between HR and payroll systems and pension administration systems, making the process of getting the right employees into the right scheme simpler and ensuring ongoing management runs smoothly once each employer has passed the initial staging date.
"Auto-enrolment will make a huge difference to millions of employees who don't currently save anything for their retirement. By managing the process of getting the right employees into the right schemes employers can focus on communicating the benefits to their employees to ensure the overall aim of auto-enrolment succeeds."
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