DC & Auto-enrolment

The UK’s largest mastertrusts have steeled themselves for a helpline capacity crunch as auto-enrolment reaches its peak year.

The Office of Fair Trading’s investigation into workplace pensions is too strongly focused on charges and overlooks areas such as administration and the level of service at schemes, industry figures have said.

Leading signatories to the Association of British Insurers' charges disclosure agreement have said more providers would feel pressure to sign up if the Pensions Regulator policed the standards.

Small defined contribution schemes may find it difficult to comply with the key quality features and governance code proposed by the Pensions Regulator yesterday, industry figures have said. 

Pensions minister Steve Webb was told defined contribution was an "awful" system that the government and industry must "urgently" work on, during a House of Lords select committee meeting yesterday.

Round-up: Hurdles faced by employers implementing auto-enrolment in 2012.

Round-up: In the past 12 months the unions have expressed strong views on a range of subjects including auto-enrolment, the Local Government Pension Scheme and deferred membership.

Smaller employers within the Strathclyde Pension Fund have not yet started syncing their pension arrangements with auto-enrolment requirements ahead of their 2015-16 staging dates, its data gathering exercise has found.

Ladbrokes has chosen a mastertrust, which it sees as a low-cost and accessible scheme design, to auto-enrol 14,000 eligible employees from next March.

Payroll providers have made significant gains in auto-enrolment readiness in recent weeks, the Pensions Regulator has said, but employers still need to make sure their needs are being met.