Talking head: Nest's CEO Tim Jones looks at the day-to-day challenges facing the government-sponsored scheme, and how it is gearing up to meet the needs of this year's stagers.
So far we have around 840,000 members saving with us, more than 2,700 participating employers and more than £71m in assets under management.
We’re also encouraged to see awareness of the reforms is high among the next set of staging employers, while the opt-out rate among workers remains low – 8 per cent for our scheme and 10 per cent across the wider industry, which is much lower than many expected.
Working closely with employers and third parties is crucial in making sure auto-enrolment continues to be a success
Of course, our day job is helping existing customers get auto-enrolment right. We process more than 1m contribution transactions a week in order to do this, while getting ready for the new influx of staging employers too.
But there are significant challenges ahead, not least because of the much larger numbers of employers staging this year – an estimated 30,000 between April and December with almost 25,000 between April and July alone.
In addition, there are signs that many medium and small employers are unprepared for meeting their duties, despite being aware of the reforms.
As revealed in our research report, published last month, many employers have gaps in their pensions knowledge, experience and level of preparation and are underestimating the time and level of work involved.
Our report also shows the majority are expecting support from a number of sources, particularly advisers, but also other intermediaries, such as accountants and payroll providers.
Reassuringly, advisers seem to have acknowledged this, with more than 80 per cent of those with a significant proportion of clients staging in 2014 having identified ways to help their clients adjust to the reforms. There are also signs that advisers with clients staging in 2015 or later have started to explore ways they can provide support.
As well as developing our tools for employers, Nest is putting a lot of time and resource into helping advisers, accountants and other third parties help their clients, because we recognise the important role they play.
For example, we have launched a new programme of workshops for advisers, helping them understand and use our delegated access system, consisting of 14 events around the country over the next three months. We’re also running bespoke sessions for individual advisory firms, either face-to-face or remotely through online technology.
We’re continuing to develop our online tools for employers who come to us direct and have created countdown emails to help employers at each stage in their preparation. These emails tell employers what they need to do and think about, step by step, as they approach their staging date.
Meanwhile our recently launched employer help centre and dedicated site for advisers further reflect our commitment to supporting the next wave of employers and those assigned to help them.
Working closely with employers and third parties is crucial in making sure auto-enrolment continues to be a success.
Tim Jones is chief executive at Nest
