Oct 2016
20
At 30 September 2016 36% of employees now auto-enrolled
In a recent survey of employees in the UK undertaken by YouGov, on behalf of the workplace pension provider Smart Pension, has resulted in more than one third of employees have now set up a pension through the government's auto-enrolment initiative.
Results of the survey regarding employees about what type of pensions they have are:
• 36% said their pensions were created under auto-enrolment,
• 28% said they had non-auto-enrolled workplace pensions,
• 17% had a standard personal pension (SPP),
• 8% had a self-invested personal pension (SIPP) and
• 7% had a stakeholder pension.
• 6% had no idea what sort of pension they have
• 17% said they have no pension
Will Wynne, co-founder and MD of Smart Pension, said: “Auto-enrolment has already overtaken every other form of pension, including personal pensions, in a very short space of time. The initiative is clearly gaining momentum and looks on track to hit targets over the next two years when 1.8m small and micro firms have staged.”
Opt-outs
19% of UK employees said they would either opt out or have opted out of their workplace scheme, this is higher than the governments targeted figure of 15% opt-out rate. Currently the government's own figures are circa 10%, almost half than the amount resulted per the poll.
The main reason employees are opting out are due to lack of available monies (26%) or they would not want to invest in a pension (17%). 48% of employees did not want to think of preparing and saving for old age although 56% of employees believed they were not preparing adequately for retirement and saving enough. The results of the survey showed that most employees could afford to invest more money in their pension but they had no intention of doing so.
A separate poll found 55% of employers thought auto-enrolment was a burden and 38% said it was unfair, but 72% said they felt it would not hold back growth plans.
