Despite robust changes to the pensions landscape over the past couple of years – and a number of high profile pension scheme ‘black holes’ continuing to hit the press – employer pensions are still considered the safest ways to save for retirement. Comment from Catherine Pinkney, founder of Paycircle.

A proportion of this success is down to the government’s automatic enrolment rollout – giving a huge swathe of employees a chance to save for their retirement. Yet in spite of a concerted – and often colourful – campaign by the Regulator to raise awareness of the workplace pensions overhaul, around a third of UK staff responded that they still know little, if anything, about auto-enrolment. 

Even more staggeringly, one in ten respondents hadn’t even heard of the scheme, which comes as a blow to the Regulator’s attempts at visibility through public-facing advertising fronted by pension mascot, Workie. With 95 percent of small businesses aware of their auto-enrolment responsibilities, there’s a clear disparity here between awareness amongst business owners and their staff.  

This lack of understanding amongst staff could have resounding implications for the success of the rollout. For example, there’s little clarity amongst pension schemes, the Regulator and business owners on technical, but highly-impacting, issues such as the role of ‘ceasing active membership’ – the method by which staff can ‘pause’ contributions for a given time. Over the next year or two, thousands of small and micro businesses reach their staging dates and if this latest evidence is anything to go by, Workie will have his or her work cut out.”