Scottish Widows’ 14th annual Retirement Report looks in detail at auto enrolment and whether this is actually helping people to save more for their retirement. They have found that almost 2 million people who have more than one job, termed “multi-jobbers” don’t reach the minimum earnings level in any of their employments so are not getting the opportunity to opt in to Auto Enrolment schemes.
In 2017 the Department for Work and Pensions published a report which set out the analysis and findings they used for the Auto Enrolment Review 2017. One of the two major proposals in this report was to remove the lower earnings limit, which would open the door for the multi-jobbers, who are in many cases working full-time hours overall, to benefit. The government are looking to implement this change by the mid 2020’s after discussions with stakeholders and a formal consultation.
In the meantime Scottish Widows projections show that the 1.9m multi jobbers are missing out on over £90 million of employer contributions a year which could be claimed if the earnings threshold was scrapped.
For employers there seems to be a never ending stream of new regulations especially around payroll. We are payroll experts based in Birmingham and it is our job to take away the headache of compiling the right figures for reporting and of course to make sure your employees get paid correctly and on-time. Please contact us for a discussion about your payroll needs, for today or the future.