The challenge
The client approached us after it was highlighted to them, by The Pensions Regulator (TPR), that their Declaration of Compliance was still outstanding.
They had an existing pension scheme in place, with a commercial pension provider, which they had assumed met legal requirements. Their existing scheme was not, however, compliant for the purposes of auto-enrolment.
At the time the client came to us to seek assistance, their original staging date (the date at which they should have been compliant) had passed and TPR had already begun to issue penalties.
How did GH help?
First and foremost, the existence of our payroll bureau meant that the client was able to outsource their payroll function to us.
We quickly got to work calculating the back-contributions that the employer would now need to pay, encompassing both the employee and employer contributions that were missed whilst the non-compliant scheme was in place.
In order to ensure that each worker received the correct back-contribution and the correct communications, we needed to take a month-by-month overview of the payroll and assess each worker as per the auto-enrolment eligibility criteria.
We assisted our client with setting up a compliant pension scheme and enrolled all eligible workers into the scheme. This meant that we could process the backdated contributions as efficiently as possible.
In addition, we liaised with TPR on our clients behalf to explain the situation and to provide them with regular updates throughout the journey to compliance. Once the employer’s legal duties had been met, we completed the Declaration of Compliance for them.
The outcome
The client now has a pension scheme in place that is compliant with auto-enrolment and appropriate pensions contributions are being paid into the scheme for all eligible workers.
Due to the swift handling of the situation, we were able to help our client to comply quickly and efficiently and to minimise the penalties that were imposed.
