Auto-enrolment penalties: Are you at risk?

Employers who fail to comply with the auto-enrolment regulations, the process that requires all employers to offer their staff a pension scheme, may be subject to statutory notices, penalties or escalating fines by The Pensions Regulator.

Auto-enrolment is now entering a critical stage where hundreds of thousands of small businesses are reaching their staging dates and deadlines to comply.

The scheme has been phased in to allow smaller businesses the opportunity to prepare for such changes. The responsibility for complying rests with the employer and enforcement action can ensue if deadlines are missed.

Businesses that fail to comply in time will face enforcement action in line with The Pensions Regulator’s risk-based approach and may include the following:

• Warning – The Pensions Regulator sends the employer a compliance notice.
• Fixed fine – If the employer doesn’t comply, The Pensions Regulator issues
  another warning and a fine of 400.
• Daily fine – Where the employer continues to break the regulations, there will be a fine for each day, with the penalty increasing until the company complies. The
  daily amount depends on the number of the employees.

Late Stagers

Missing your staging date does not only mean incurring fines. It also means that all contributions will be backdated, and due to the increased volume of work at this late stage, adviser fees may increase as a result.

Help and advice

While The Pensions Regulator can offer some support, the responsibility of finding a scheme provider, handling the red tape and making systems auto-enrolment friendly is down to the employer themselves.

Please get in touch with SG Financial Services, if you would like to know more about these pensions regulations, are unaware of what you need to do ahead of your staging date, or are looking to make sure that your payroll systems are up to the challenge: we are here to help.

You can also download our Automatic enrolment: Employer Guide to learn more.