Over 78,000 employers had fulfilled their auto-enrolment duties by the end of 2015, but more than 100,000 more will meet their staging dates in the first three months of 2016.
TPR figures published today show 5,809,000 new members have been auto-enrolled into pensions since October 2012. But a further 5,439,000 were not eligible to be enrolled because they did not meet the earnings threshold or fulfil other qualification requirements.
The figures – to December 2015 – show 9,480,000 employees were already in a qualifying workplace scheme that had reached its staging date, with 21.2m employees now in schemes that have declared compliance with the auto-enrolment regulations, across 78,789 employers.
Hargreaves Lansdown head of corporate pension research Nathan Long says: “The auto-enrolment tidal wave is just about to hit. Small employers should turn their attention to understanding who they need to enrol, how much they should pay, when they need to do it and into what pension. The Pension Regulator website is a great source of information, but pension providers will be understandably stretched. Employers should give themselves as much time as possible to avoid any nasty surprises.”
