Pensions Explained

Employers can breathe a sigh of relief

Employers faced with the burden of implementing an auto-enrolment scheme for their employees will welcome the change in stance by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). This now means that employers will have more time to notify their employees about a waiting period and their right to opt in to the company scheme. …

Improving transfers and growing big fat pension pots

Transferring a company pension from an ex-employer to a new arrangement has never been the easiest of tasks. Normally the pension provider, on behalf of the company, issues a ‘leaver pack’ written in pensions technical ‘jargon’ that more often than not is filed away until retirement. It is no wonder workers have built up a string…

Planning to down tools now?

Retirement is often considered the holiday of a lifetime or the chance to rest and rewind after a busy career. The State provides only a meagre pension and so the pension plans and company schemes you have been paying in to for many years should provide for the little extras when you retire. If you…

Once a Frozen Pension always a Frozen Pension

In the distant past, when a member left a final salary or career average scheme, the pension earned was frozen. This meant the pension was left to wither on the vine rather than enjoy the returns on the money invested. Anyone with an ounce of sense would expect the right to a stream of deferred pay to at…

Tough economic conditions mean small employers benefit from delay

Small firms have been given an extra year to prepare for the auto enrolment of their employees into a qualifying pension scheme. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced a revised timetable so that small firms with fewer than 50 employees will not begin the process until mid 2015 instead of April 2014…

A bleak old age!

The Workplace Retirement Income Commission recently reported that millions of private sector workers face a ‘bleak old age’ because they fell through the cracks of pension provision. Evidently the number of people saving in to company pension schemes in the private sector has almost halved since 1991! This may come as no great surprise given the shape of the…

Getting serious now rather than later could secure the retirement you deserve

Public sector workers are making a stand, State Pension is under threat and world markets are in disarray. Newspaper headlines are full of one pension scare after another! So will there be enough in the pension kitty when you eventually come to retire? You should be concerned! After all you work long and hard enough…

Benefit from the success of your business

If you are running a successful business how can you use that to generate financial security in retirement? There are a range of potential solutions that will provide both you and your employees with tax efficient retirement benefits. Stakeholder arrangements and group pension plans for your colleagues and employees are both an attractive recruitment tool…

Flex Benefits – providing the right package

More and more employers are aware that a good salary alone is not enough to attract and retain the best staff. Companies realise that offering the right benefits package is essential whilst employees are demanding greater flexibility from their package. Employers planning to introduce a flexible benefit package may also provide a solution for the…

Could longer life expectancy be the death of pensions?

Increasing life expectancy, new accounting standards, regulatory changes and the continued volatility surrounding scheme deficits have all contributed to make Defined Benefit pension schemes a major corporate headache for many companies. As a result many employers are looking at ways of reducing the exposure to risk that the pension scheme poses, ranging from…