The minimum contributions you and your staff pay into your automatic enrolment workplace pension scheme will increase from 6th April 2019. Employers will have to contribute at least 3% into the pension scheme and the total contribution needs to be at least 8%.
Who does this apply to?
If you are an employer, you likely have a pension scheme for automatic enrolment and so you will need to take action to make sure at least the minimum amounts are being contributed to the pension scheme. If you don’t employ people or you employ only the directors you probably don’t need to do anything but it might be worth having the conversation with your accountant just to check.
What do you need to do?
Up to 5th April 2019, an employer only needed to contribute 2% and the total contribution needed to be at least 5% but from 6th April 2019, this will increase to 3% and 8% respectively. This will likely mean that most employers will contribute the minimum 3% leaving the employee to contribute the other 5% but these percentages can be anything providing the minimum contribution is met. Some employers choose to contribute the full 8% so that the employee doesn’t need to contribute as this can be seen as an incentive to both parties.
You will also need to notify your staff of the change and the percentages you choose to offer before making the change.
