Workplace Pension Re-enrolment
...rules you need to know
Workplace Pension Re-enrolment
Tuesday June 11, 2019
So your business is up and running, your payroll’s ticking over and your employees are all registered for their Workplace Pensions. It all takes care of itself from here, right? Well, not exactly. Your responsibilities as an employer aren’t automatically fulfilled once your pension scheme’s rolling. Even if there’s no one you need to re-enrol, you’ll still have to make a declaration that you’re fully complying with the rules. You’ll get fined if you don’t keep up with these responsibilities, so don’t think you can safely slack off.
There are basically 3 types of employee you need to re-enrol:
- Anyone who’s opted out of your scheme.
- Anyone who left your scheme after the end of the opt-out period.
- Anyone still in your scheme who’s reduced their contributions to below the minimum level.
You’ve got a little control over your re-enrolment date. You can pick from a 6-month window, starting 3 months before the 3rd anniversary of your automatic enrolment staging date and ending 3 months after it. If you’re not sure what yours is, you can use the official staging date calculator to work it out – or check with RIFT.
When your re-enrolment date rolls around, you’ve got to assess your staff to see who needs to be signed back up. You can skip the assessment for people who:
- Are already signed up to your qualifying scheme.
- Is 21 years old or under, or at/above the State Pension age.
- Hasn’t yet had an automatic enrolment date. This can happen if they haven’t met the age and earnings criteria yet, or if they’ve been postponed.
- Anyone who has opted out of pension scheme within 12 months of your re-enrolment date
So, you’ve got yourself a list of employees to re-enrol and an enrolment date set. You’ve now got to get everyone signed up within six weeks of that date. Once they’re re-enrolled, you then write to them to let them know what you’ve done and submit a re-declaration of compliance, which you can find here. Remember, you’ve got to do this even if no one needed re-enrolling.
The Workplace Pension is full of fiddly little rules like this – and it’s more than just your own future that depends on you getting them right. Of course, if you’ve got RIFT Accounting on your team, we’re here to make sure you never get tripped up by a deadline or regulation. Get in touch with whatever questions you have, and keep checking back here for more Voices from the RIFT…
