19 March 2020
Following on from yesterday’s post, please find attached our FAQ document on Group Health & Risk. We understand that you may not currently have some, or all of these products, or indeed have these held with other brokers; but you may find that these are useful, and offer some support to your employees.
Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Corinthian Benefits has been closely monitoring the situation regarding COVID-19. This is a rapidly evolving situation and we are regularly monitoring and following guidance from Public Health England, the World Health Organisation as well as that of the Government.
The safety of our people and clients is our utmost priority. As a business, we have well established business continuity plans to respond to various crisis scenarios, including a pandemic.
With this in mind, we have taken precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our workforce. In accordance with Government advice we have asked our client support team to work from home as of today – Thursday 19th March – and until further notice. Our Consultants, who work in client facing roles are already home-working and will ensure that we can continue to deliver good client service.
Keeping our business functional is a key priority. We have worked hard as a company to ensure business activities will go ahead with minimal disruption to our clients. This will mean that we will need to find alternative methods of communication and sharing information with you. Wherever possible, face to face meetings can be replaced using technology such as video calls.
Please be reassured that we are committed to providing you with the best service possible at this challenging time. We will be sending you communications over the coming days to help support you and your employees in times of financial and emotional upheaval.
Please also be reminded that we are able to talk to you and your employees about their financial situation, and offer some guidance to help support any concerns they have at this time.
In the meantime, we hope that you, your family and colleagues stay safe and well.
18 March 2020
In these rather unsettling and unprecedented times, we at Corinthian Benefits would like to support you and your employees as much as we can. We appreciate that you are trying to keep your business functional and provide reassurance to your employees and your own clients.
Please find attached our initial FAQs for you to share with your employees. We fully anticipate that we will be sending more updates as things are changing at such a pace, and we will be shortly providing some FAQs that might assist on Group Health and Risk.
Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Corinthian Benefits has been closely monitoring the situation regarding COVID-19. This is a rapidly evolving situation and we are regularly monitoring and following guidance from Public Health England, the World Health Organisation as well as that of the Government.
The safety of our people and clients is our utmost priority. As a business, we have well established business continuity plans to respond to various crisis scenarios, including a pandemic.
With this in mind, we have taken precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our workforce. In accordance with Government advice we have asked our client support team to work from home as of tomorrow – Thursday 19th March – and until further notice. Our Consultants, who work in client facing roles are already home-working and will ensure that we can continue to deliver good client service.
Keeping our business functional is a key priority. We have worked hard as a company to ensure business activities will go ahead with minimal disruption to our clients. This will mean that we will need to find alternative methods of communication and sharing information with you. Wherever possible, face to face meetings can be replaced using technology such as video calls.
Please be reassured that we are committed to providing you with the best service possible at this challenging time. We will be sending you communications over the coming days to help support you and your employees in times of financial and emotional upheaval.
Please also be reminded that we are able to talk to you and your employees about their financial situation, and offer some guidance to help support any concerns they have at this time.
In the meantime, we hope that you, your family and colleagues stay safe and well.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
11 March 2020
Below are the key points from today’s Budget that will have the biggest impact on our clients and their employees.
Extra support for the NHS to fight the virus – £5bn emergency response fund
Employees support:
Business Support:
‘The value of investments may go up as well as down’ – a disclaimer you could recite from memory, yet the idea of risk is still not particularly understood by many investors. In fact, unless you are of the older investment generation (who remembers Black Monday or the 2002 Dotcom Bubble Burst?) the recent drop of the FTSE-100, caused by the spread of coronavirus, may have been a worrying reality check.
The truth is that no one can predict how the current state of affairs will progress, (if we could then we’d be millionaires!) The only certainty is that the market depression looks set to remain for the foreseeable whilst the impact of the virus on China is felt in supply chains around the world.
Don’t panic! Hopefully your investments have been made with a long-term goal in mind, spanning years (ideally at least three to five) rather than months; allowing for any losses now to be recouped over the time. After all, investors who saw markets crash by 30% in the 2008/9 financial crash saw a 30% rise in the following months.
Keep Calm and Carry On! If you have a payment plan in place, or even a payment routine – carry on! By continuing to invest regularly you will be buying investment units at different prices every time and getting more for your money than you previously have been, this is known as pound cost-averaging.
Lessons Learned… Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we are now, in many ways, at the mercy of the virus. An important lesson to take from this experience is to not become complacent about investments. By keeping an eye on the markets, or engaging regular professional advice, future issues could at least be managed or the impact minimalised by acting quickly.
4 March 2020
For many twenty-somethings the idea of securing their own home is probably far higher on the list of priorities than worrying about the shape of their finances in forty years’ time! And while this new generation of savers won’t actually be needing their pension pots until the 2060’s there’s no denying that when it comes to planning for the future ‘the sooner the better’ is a valuable attitude.
Thanks mostly to the auto-enrolment process introduced in 2012, the majority of 22-29 year olds (84%) are now paying into a pension, compared to less than 25% in 2012. But just how much should they be putting aside and how will the choices they make now affect their retirement plans?
Since April 6th 2019 (for everyone aged between 22 and state pension age earning over £10,000) a minimum of 8% of an employee’s gross monthly pay before tax is paid into their pension. This consists of 3% from the employer, 4% from the employee and the final 1% from pension tax relief.
There are two interlinked factors to consider when making pension contributions. The first is how much of your salary you can afford to put away each month. The second is to envisage the size of the pension pot you want to have available to you in the future. Many people are only making the minimum 8% provision without really understanding how much this will yield. In fact, a recent report from Scottish Widows defined ‘adequate’ as 12% of income.
Despite this, two in five of 22 – 29 year olds surveyed felt that they were saving ‘adequately’ for retirement.
At Corinthian we take the time to explain the pension conundrum to clients and their employees. We are passionate in our belief of engaging all employees at whatever stage of life they are at; we really do want them to be able to make their retirement dream a reality.
Many employees have made contributions into more than one pension scheme, this will only increase with the introduction of Automatic Enrolment, so it is imperative that people understand the options and possible benefits of consolidating these pots.
Speak to a member of the Corinthian team to discuss how we make the complex simple!
27 February 2020
The 2019 Automatic Enrolment Evaluation Report, published this week by the Independent Pension Commission and the DWP, demonstrates that 87% of eligible employees now contribute to a workplace pension; with a reassuringly low number of employees choosing to opt-out of auto enrolment. Only rising from 0.72% to 0.76% during the first quarter of the 2019/20 tax year.
The independent Pension Commission was introduced to address long term retirement saving in the UK. The work of the commission was further supported in 2012 when the Government launched automatic enrolment, designed as a way to ensure that the UK has a robust pension system enabling individuals to save towards the retirement they aspire to.
Since the start of auto enrolment in 2012 more than 10.2million workers have been automatically enrolled. Data collected up to 2018 found that the number of eligible employees participating in a workplace pension had increased to 18.7million – a 55% increase since 2012.
The report also noted a 47% increase in the number of private sector employers with some sort of workplace pension provision. This accounts for 62% of private sector employers.
“Automatic enrolment has been an unparalleled success, transforming pension saving for millions of people”, comments Therese Coffey, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
“The saving habit is sticking too, as people recognise the importance of putting money towards their retirement” She continues, “I want people to save even more, if they can, to make sure the retirement they get is the retirement they want.”
Automatic Enrolment was introduced in stages and the IPC have declared that this is the last annual report planned now that the implementation period for automatic enrolment is over.
17 December 2019
This will be our recurring theme for 2020, so watch this space for more like this!
2020 Vision – What is your employee focus going to be in 2020
Use our experience and expertise with employee benefits to make your business stand out in 2020.
31 October 2019
Statistics tell us that employees in the UK are no longer motivated by financial reward alone; in fact flexible working has become a popular request by many and recent research found that 47% of people questioned considered this the most desirable workplace benefit.
But what of those many small and medium-sized businesses that can’t always offer flexible options? Luckily, 62% of respondents surveyed by CV Library would include company benefits and perks in their decision to find their next job. In fact 13% would turn down a job if the organisation did not offer workplace perks and 71% of respondents believe all organisations should offer perks.
It is this requirement that a recent MetLife UK report focused on. Surveying nearly 34,000 businesses employing 3.3million people. Results showed that more than half (53%) of these small and medium-sized enterprises were looking to expand the benefits they offer as they focus on recruitment and retention.
Many are recognising that appreciated employees are happy employees and with the right benefits package you can retain your best people. You might even save some money if your perks package is tailored to be as attractive as a higher salary, at a fraction of the cost.
At Corinthian we have helped hundreds of SMEs such as these create bespoke company benefits programmes to reward the true value of their staff. As an independent consultancy we work with all the major providers of employee benefits. We know their products and access great deals; from cycle schemes to lifestyle perks. We can offer the right advice and save client’s money.
If you are looking for affordable, effective and relevant ways to reward your team speak to an Employee Benefits Consultant at Corinthian Benefits on 0208 189 6100.