16 July 2021
I have pleasure in attaching our July Insights Newsletter and delighted to share some interesting articles provided by our friends at Beaufort Financial, Fleet Evolution and Pink Spaghetti.
As ever, should you have anything you wish to discuss please let us know.
8 July 2021
Car schemes have always been popular as options for salary sacrifice schemes; allowing people to choose vehicles that they may not ordinarily have been able to afford in return for a payment from their pre-tax salary.
The latest car schemes also allow participants to fulfil a moral and environmental obligation as, from the 6th April 2020, the UK Government introduced huge tax savings (30% – 60%) for people to lease an electric vehicle through company salary sacrifice schemes. This has made owning an electric vehicle even more of an attractive proposition.
Whilst the vehicles may be more environmentally responsible, the structure of the scheme is still fundamentally the same as traditional salary sacrifice schemes. In the first instance the company rents an electric car from a supplier and the employee can then rent the car in exchange for their monthly payment from their gross salary (income before tax or net salary + employees’ national insurance + income tax).
Regular maintenance of the car is usually dealt with by a third party.
Operating an electric car scheme does not just benefit your employees; as an employer you will benefit from:
Whilst employees can enjoy savings on their tax and National Insurance, fixed tax-free payments, no initial up-front costs and savings on fuel and running costs.
Here are some tips, as listed in a recent article from the website Employee Benefits, on how you can implement a company car scheme in your business:
We would love to talk to you via phone, video call or face to face, depending on your preference, to answer your questions. Please contact us at [email protected] Tel: 0208 189 6100
29 April 2021
I have pleasure in attaching our May Insights Newsletter and delighted to share some interesting articles provided by our friends at Flourish in Mind, Travel Counsellors, and one from Corinthian on Health Cash Plans.
As ever, should you have anything you wish to discuss please let us know.
20 April 2021
Please see the attached article which is good news for Bursars to pass onto their current or former Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) members.
30 March 2021
What are health cash plans?
Health cash plans are schemes that allow you to pay a monthly fee and in return you are entitled to have your routine medical and dental expenses covered. For example, you might pay £10 a month and that could cover up to £100 of dental costs, £100 of physio appointments and £100 of opticians’ appointments.
While it may sound similar to health insurance, they are not the same thing and you may even have both at the same time. This is because health insurance will only cover conditions that develop after you take out a plan, whereas a cash plan can be used to cover ongoing and routine appointments.
Many employees enjoy health cash plans as a perk of their job, and they use them to help with the costs of routine health appointments. However, with the Covid-19 outbreak and the initial lockdown in the UK in March 2020, routine dental and optical appointments were put on hold.
Now, a year into the pandemic, routine appointments are available, however are cash plans still a useful employee benefit?
Are health cash plans still a useful employee benefit?
Despite the multiple lockdowns, which resulted in some routine services being put on hold, cash plan claims for dental and optical appointments have continued throughout the year. This suggests that employees are still benefiting from cash plans, and it makes sense – the Covid-19 pandemic has put a strain on people’s mental and physical health, as well as a strain on their finances.
Many cash plans include telephone helplines for stress, debt management, and addiction, as well as legal and financial information, and this support has been invaluable for people throughout the pandemic.
Another important factor to note, is that the pandemic has required many services to be delivered virtually. Cash plans can offer access to virtual GP helplines, which has meant people have been able to speak to their GP without fear of the virus.
Health cash plans and wellbeing
Another way that cash plans have come into play, is in supporting mental health. Almost half of employees feel like the pandemic has made their job more stressful, and 42% of employers have lost an employee due to inadequate wellbeing support at work. Cash plans are a way to offer support whilst employees are working remotely.
One way to make sure cash plans can continue to offer support for employees is to extend the claim period, offer payment holidays, and to pay claims in the correct benefit year, when they were rescheduled due to the pandemic.
Cash plans in a virtual world
The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have meant many healthcare providers had to rapidly transition to an online space. By December 2020, 89% of GP consultations were delivered online using video technology.
Online counselling calls have also increased by 903% and counselling services have seen a 44% increase in anxiety calls.
With stress and anxiety at an all-time high, cash plans can provide a vital bridge to counsellors and preventative healthcare. This on demand approach to healthcare will likely remain in the future and health cash plans have the potential to enable a proactive solution to looking after employee’s health and wellbeing.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of health cash plans and what they are and how to use them.
As we are operating primarily remotely right now, we can offer a telephone call, or virtual video call to answer your questions. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
9 March 2021
According to the Association of British Insurers, around 1.6 million pension pots worth £19.4 billion are unclaimed due to savers failing to contact their pension provider when they move house.
Only 1 in 25 people contact their pension provider when they move house which causes many people to lose significant amounts of money which they have simply forgotten about.
Now is a good time to start thinking of which employers you have worked for and start checking if some of the £19.4 billion is yours.
The Government even have a website to help you trace lost pensions, why not give it a try: https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details
4 March 2021
Employers claims that certain roles can only be fulfilled from the office may themselves be made redundant with almost half (45%) of British office workers believing that the pandemic will result in a ‘permanent change’ to their employers approach to flexible working.
O2s ‘The Flexible Future of Work’ report, conducted by the telecoms giant in partnership with ICM and YouGov, found that 81% of respondents who anticipate a change are expecting to be able to work at least one day a week from home, with 33% aiming to increase their home working by at least three days a week after lockdown.
These potential changes to the work/life balance could also have a knock-on effect for geographical popularity. The poll showed that nearly half of city dwellers (41%) would consider a move to more rural locations and 63% of Brits would be willing to live up to an hour away from their workplace if the need to physically attend the office was reduced.
If the geography factor in recruiting is reduced, then competition to attract and retain staff could intensify post lockdown.
The findings of the report were released just days before Twitter announced that all its employees will be allowed to work at home ‘forever’.
“If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen” said Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.
Dr Heejung Chung, Reader in Sociology and Social Policy Director at the University of Kent, who is currently researching the impact of flexible working, said: “The UK has a huge challenge with the geographic distribution of wealth, and this exaggerates the problem of overpopulation in cities. If people could work from wherever they want to, without any fear of career penalty, this would create a huge opportunity for everyone.”
Natasha Newby, Head of Proposition Development commented “At Corinthian we have always understood the need, and indeed always have had members of our team that use, agile working. We know that this is important to support the business, our client’s business needs and of course to support our team and their home commitments. Lockdown has just highlighted the efficiency of flexible working.”
3 March 2021
25 February 2021
The Government recently announced plans to expand its dormant asset scheme to include assets from the insurance and pensions, investment and wealth management, and securities sectors. This money will be used to aid the Covid-19 recovery.
A dormant asset is defined as a financial product, for example a bank account, which has been left untouched for many years and which the provider, following industry best practice, has not been able to reunite with its owner. The dormant asset scheme is voluntary, which means business can choose whether or not to participate and how much they wish to transfer.
The Reclaim Fund, which was established in 2011, distributes the money from participating bank and building society accounts that has been left unclaimed for 15 years. So far, it has released around £150 million to help with the Covid-19 recovery.
There are around 30 banks and building societies that are included, but the expansion of this scheme will see the programme open up to City firms across the insurance and pensions, investment and wealth management, and securities sectors. This could potentially release a further £800 million to help assist the Covid-19 recovery.
This change comes after a 4-year review and public consultation process, which found there was widespread support for the scheme. The different sectors will each have their own guidelines, which will outline when assets can be moved to the Reclaim Fund. Reasonable efforts will need to be made to track down customers and reunite them with their accounts before they can be transferred to the Reclaim Fund.
This scheme will be led by the financial industry and backed by the UK government. The scheme will be focused on consumer protection, with the main priority being to reunite people with their lost funds. This will involve trying to find people who may have moved to a new house, for example, by tracing them via Royal Mail, email, telephone, a tracing service, or a credit reference agency.
That said, the scheme ran into trouble earlier this year when it was revealed HSBC had been warned by its compliance staff in 2017 that it was not doing enough to reunite customers with their money before transferring it to the scheme. While HSBC denied it wasn’t doing enough, it has since made changes to improve its dormant account policy.
Since 2011, the dormant asset scheme has contributed £745 million to charitable initiatives from dormant accounts that have been unattended for a minimum of 15 years.
In England, any money from the dormant asset scheme must be used for organisations and initiatives that are focused on young people, financial, or social investment. So far, more than £650 million has been invested in these causes across four different organisations:
1. The Youth Futures Foundation (£90m)
2. Fair4All Finance (£96m)
3. Big Society Capital (£425m)
4. Access – The Foundation for Social Investment (£40m)
In Wales, the funding is reserved for programmes that focus on climate change and supporting young people with disabilities into employment.
The Scottish government directs dormant assets funding to the Young Start programme, which aims to improve the physical and mental wellbeing of young people by supporting them to learn new skills and enter employment.
In Northern Ireland, dormant assets funding is reserved for the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.
The expansion of the scheme will mean hundreds of millions can be invested into good causes and it will play a vital role in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Get in touch, if you’re worried you may have dormant assets, or you have lost track of your pension funds. We can help you use the government’s lost pension tracker to try and locate your lost pensions: https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details.
6 January 2021
I hope that you, your families and colleagues remain safe and well, and that you were able to enjoy the festive break. Despite the current lockdown, here at Corinthian we remain optimistic that 2021 will bring brighter times than 2020, and to once again let you know that we are all working remotely and we are here to help you and your colleagues.
As you may be aware the Chancellor Rishi Sunak, announced some additional support measures for businesses particularly in the retails, hospitality and leisure sector that have been forced to close.
The Chancellor has made available an additional £4.6 billion for the hardest hit businesses in the form of a new lockdown grant. This is a one-off cash grant of up to £9,000 per business property to help businesses in the following sectors that have been forced to close:
The funding is expected to benefit over 600,000 business properties across the UK and is allocated as follows:
Local Councils will be given an additional £594 million discretionary fund to support other businesses not eligible for the above grant but that are affected by the restrictions. Those businesses should apply direct to their Local Authority for this.
I am also attaching an article (2 min read) that we recently published on our social media channels, which you may find interesting. As ever, please feel free to contact me or our Client Support team if you need us, and we will be happy to help.