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Month: February 2018

23 February 2018

Standard Life has announced the sale of its workplace pensions business to Phoenix Group.

This comes just days after the collapse of a proposed merger with Scottish Widows had been announced. Standard Life had in recent years been the largest workplace pensions provider in the UK. It will continue to market and distribute the workplace pensions, which will retain the Standard brand name, on a white-label basis, while the back office administration and ownership of the schemes will transfer to Phoenix.

A Standard Life source says it is too early to say whether there will be any job losses.

 

Why not take a look at our other articles about pensions in the industry:

Two weeks ago we reported that Now: Pensions Trustee was fined £70,000 by The Pensions Regulator – now it’s up for sale

Now: Pensions is arguably the third-biggest master trust in the UK. The provider has been put up for sale following a catalogue of administration problems. These problems have led to the provider exiting the Pension Regulator’s approved provider list and a fine for its trustees.

The provider has been beset with administration problems since launch and has suffered several years of poor performance. So now it has been offered for sale to a number of parties over the last few months. However, at least one provider has rejected the £560m scheme because of ongoing concerns over its administration.

Watch this space for further developments…..

15 February 2018

Auto Enrolment doesn’t end with your Declaration of Compliance

Implementing a workplace pension is not the end of compliance. So you’ve assessed your staff, put them into a workplace pension scheme, paid your contributions and declared your compliance. That’s not the end!  You still have legal duties that need to be completed, auto-enrolment is an ongoing responsibility. It is NOT a one-off exercise.

Every time you run your payroll you should be assessing your staff. You need to check who should be enrolled in the pension scheme and work out how much to pay in.  If you took on any new employees who are eligible for auto-enrolment, these workers need to be enrolled too.  You also have to manage the opt-outs and requests to opt-in and maintain records.

Re-enrolment takes place every three years and eligible staff who previously opted-out or left the scheme must be put back into it and a re-declaration of compliance must be completed to confirm what you have done about re-enrollment to the Pensions Regulator.

Failure to comply with your ongoing duties will lead to a fine, so if you need help with your new pension responsibilities, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us

6 February 2018

Now: Pensions has been fined £70,000

The trustee of master trust Now: Pensions has been fined £70,000. They have also been given a set of stringent deadlines to fix long-running pension scheme issues. This was announced by the Pensions Regulator (tPR) today.

Their CEO maintains that they “remain very much open for business”. However, in July 2017 NOW: Pensions voluntarily removed themselves from the Master Trust Assurance list for Auto Enrolment providers. This was after a discussion with tPR surrounding its historic contribution issues.

Read more about the Now: Pensions being fined here.

Update: Now: Pensions is up for sale.

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