Newsletter article – Pension Enrolment (updated April 2015)

Get your pension the easy way - from your employer!

As the population grows older most of us can look forward to around 20 years in retirement. This is good news. But what if we haven’t saved up for our retirement? 

Millions of us are not saving enough to have the income we would like in retirement.

The state pension is a foundation for your retirement, but you may want more. Today, the current basic state pension is £115.95 a week for a single person. 

If you are in work and you haven’t started a pension, there’s good news. The government has introduced a law to help you build up a pension through your workplace. All employers are to enrol their eligible workers into a workplace pension scheme if they are not already in one. The best news is that when you pay into your pension, your employer and the government will too. This means, unlike other ways of saving, being in a workplace pension means you’re not the only one putting money in. 

So: 
- you pay into it
- we, as your employer, pay into it
- the government pays into it (in the form of tax relief*).

*Tax relief means some of your money that would have gone to the government as income tax, goes into your pension instead.

How exactly the amounts paid in are calculated can be found [insert where your workers can see this information] or will be given to you nearer the time. [delete as applicable]

The setting-up is all done by [insert name of employer]. We/your employer [delete as appropriate] will write to tell you when you have been enrolled, or if you’re not being automatically enrolled, we’ll tell you how you can start saving in a workplace pension. 

You can opt out if you want to, but if you do you’ll miss out on extra contributions from your employer and by staying in you will have your own pension pot for when you retire. 

When this will happen
When exactly an employer enrols their workers depends on their size. All firms will come on board by 2018. Here at [insert name of employer], we will enrol you into our workplace pension scheme in [insert indication of timing eg. late 2015/early 2016; Employers, find out your staging date and more automatic enrolment information by going to the TPR website]. 

To find out more about what enrolment into a workplace pension means for you, visit www.gov.uk/workplacepensions.