National Employment Savings Trust Updates

Personal accounts rebranded as NEST
The Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA) announced that the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) will be the permanent name of the new national workplace pension scheme. NEST will be a scheme designed specifically for low-to-moderate earners. It will be one of the schemes available for employers to use for automatic enrolment when this duty comes into effect from 2012.

Final Pension NEST rules go before parliament

The final draft regulations for the NEST scheme were laid before Parliament in January. There are several amendments to the new scheme aimed at making the transition easier for employers. Small companies with fewer than 50 workers will not have to take part in the scheme until sometime between March 2014 and February 2016.

Companies set up after 2012 need not enrol staff until between March and September 2016. Companies must give new staff basic information about the scheme and must be enrolled within a month of starting work. Employees will then be given a further month to decide whether to opt-out. Contributions due to be transferred to Nest will be held by the employer for that month. Among a myriad of small changes, employers will be given up to two months – up from 19 days – to pass on pension contributions, which will mean less need to “claw back” contributions when an employee opts out.

NEST charging structure unveiled

The charge structure for NEST has been announced by Government and they have indicated what the initial levels of the charge may be. NEST will initially have a combination charge made up of an annual management charge (AMC) of 0.3 per cent and a small contribution charge of around 2 per cent. For further details, the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA) has published a press release and a briefing note.

This is going to affect many of our clients and we will be advising you as such as soon as we know more. The recent election has meant that there is still some uncertainty over the details of this.