Auto-enrolment with NEST
What is auto-enrolment?
In a nutshell, it is a requirement by HMRC for employers to set up a pension scheme, automatically enrol their employees onto this, and contribute money into the scheme.
Auto-enrolment is compulsory for companies with eligible job holders. However, once employees are enrolled by default, they can decide to ‘opt-out’. Employees can only opt-out once they are automatically enrolled, and not before.’
What is NEST?
NEST is the government set-up pension scheme to allow employers to comply with their auto-enrolment responsibilities.
There are a large number of other providers of pension schemes that you can decide to work with. However, CFO360 UK can only provide the set-up for NEST schemes.
Do I have to engage CFO360 UK to do this for me?
No. You can set up on NEST yourself, or, if you decide to go with another pension scheme rather than NEST, you will have to set this up yourself.
So first you need to decide whether you would like to use NEST as your pension scheme. If the answer is no, then we can still include your scheme details on your payroll for you, but you would need to provide us with the pension scheme details.
If you do want to use NEST, then you can decide whether you would like to set it up yourself, or whether you’d like us to do it for you.
If you’d like us to set it up for you, we charge a fee of £250+VAT.
Why don’t CFO360 UK set up auto-enrolment with other pension schemes?
Unfortunately, given the huge number of different schemes, we cannot offer support to set up all of these. Therefore, like everything else we do, we’ve decided to specialise in one way of doing things; in this case, NEST.
If I choose NEST and choose for CFO360 UK to set up the scheme for me, what do you do?
We take care of the whole set-up process, sending you the relevant documents to send to your staff, and telling you when you need to do something.
We do the following:
- Send you the NEST T&Cs to confirm you’re happy with those
- Sign up with NEST on your behalf
‘Assess’ your staff, based on the information we already hold on them (we’ll ask you if there’s some information we don’t hold) - Send you the correct letters that you need to send onto your staff, based on their individual circumstances.
- Enrol your existing staff on the NEST scheme
- Set up your payroll correctly, so that we can calculate the correct contributions each month
- Send you an Infosheet to tell you how to process contributions each month on NEST. If you would like us to process the contributions for you every month, we charge a separate fee of £3 per employee per month for this.
- Send you the details of the contribution calculations each month, so that you can enter these on NEST and pay the contributions by direct debit.
- Declare compliance to the Pensions Regulator on your behalf.
One of the most difficult parts of auto-enrolment is figuring out what needs to be done, by when, and using what form, because of the large number of different options and approaches. We use our expertise and experience to take this hassle away from you and give you everything you need to ensure you comply as simply and quickly as possible.
What will I need to do, if I choose for CFO360 UK to set up the scheme for me?
There are some aspects of the set up that we need you to do, or sign off for us:
- We send you a very short questionnaire that you need to complete (3 questions!), which includes the sign-off of the NEST T&Cs
- We need you to enter your payment details on the NEST website
- We need you to fill in a couple of fields in the letters that we send to you, and then pass these onto your employees.
Please note that once set up, we’ll let you know how to enrol new staff, how to enter the correct information into NEST each month, and how to pay the contributions to NEST each month, as these responsibilities stay with you., unless you engage for this separately, as mentioned above.
What you will get from us, however, is the amounts that you need to enter into NEST each month, as we’ll provide those to you after running your payroll.
