Auto-enrolment is not just about payroll, it’s the means your staff get a meaningful top-up to their state pension. How meaningful is largely down to the investment returns of the workplace pension chosen.

Recent research from BDRC found that 92% of employers regard the choice of the staff pension as “very important”.

Many commentators had thought that once large companies had staged auto-enrolment there would be little appetite from pension providers to manage small contributions from small groups of employees.

This is not turning out to be the case. Most of the leading insurers and all the established mastertrusts have stated their appetite to stay in the market to deal with even the smallest employers.

In this competitive market, employers will be expecting to have their choices laid out and guidance on the merits of each provider. But when it comes to choosing a workplace pensions, small employers get virtually no help at all.

The Pension PlayPen is a website set up by First Actuarial, Britain’s leading pension consultancy for small employers. Its purpose is to allow SMEs and their advisers source pension offers and compare those offers using professional analytics.

So why should accountants use this website? Here are five good reasons

1. The Choose a Pension (CAP) service on www.pensionplaypen.com allows accountants to guide their clients to the right pension with the compliance responsibility for the guidance resting with Pension PlayPen and its advisers – First Actuarial.
2. CAP allows your client to complete a workforce assessment and model contributions using its own payroll data. Not only does this enable employers to model cash-flows, it gives reliable data to providers to enable best terms to be offered to your client
3. CAP works in real time- the vast majority of providers offer real-time quotes and the majority of searches run by employers using CAP have taken less than 40 minutes.
4. Employers can use the same methodology to choose a provider as employed by the major actuarial consultancies
5. The ratings published by First Actuarial on each provider are updated quarterly and cover the range of mainstream choices available to UK employers.

How to use the CAP service on www.pensionplaypen.com.

If you have a client that is unhappy with its existing arrangements or has no existing workplace pension you should direct them at this address. Alternatively, you can act as your client’s agent by registering as their agent here (https://www.pensionplaypen.com/register).

If you and your client have already competed a workforce assessment, you can input the details directly into CAP; if you have not then now is the time to download data from payroll and use CAP’s fully compliant assessment tool. The tool will tell you what each of the contributions scales will cost your client and the impact of postponement and phasing.

Once you have told CAP about your client’s workforce and contribution intentions, their details will be sent to up to 20 providers. You will be able to see the real time responses within seconds and decide how long you are prepared to wait for manually underwritten quotes.

Once you have collected sufficient quotes for your clients, you will be able to use Pension PlayPen’s unique balanced scorecard. Each quote is backed up by a detailed factsheet which gives you details about the Provider and ratings on six key metrics we use to work out how good the workplace pension is. While you cannot change the ratings given by First Actuarial, you can change the weightings give to each rating. This enables you to get a bespoke overall rating based on your client’s individual preferences. For instance, some clients will value HR and payroll support, another investment performance, another may be most concerned about the durability of a provider, yet another be most concerned about the charges levied on the scheme.

Behind all the ratings are explanations from First Actuarial explaining them. These can be found on the provider factsheets integrated in the balanced scorecard. So by the time your client has taken a decision on the Provider it should be fully aware of the basis of that decision.

This is important because any decision taken by an employer not just now but in years to come is open to challenge by employees, unions, regulators and auditors. It is also important that the pension is qualifying for auto-enrolment. The DWP has recently introduced a number of minimum standards for workplace pensions which will over the next two years ban the use of commission, active member discounts and high charges from workplace pensions. All the workplace pensions offered on CAP are vetted to be qualifying against these standards.

Once a decision has been taken, it is recorded by CAP and a message sent to the selected Provider. It is only at this point (and after permission has been given) that you client’s identity is shared with the Provider.

Once the process has been completed, we ask you or your client to purchase an audit report which documents every step taken by you and/or your client. The report also contains a compliance certificate from First Actuarial confirming that due process has been followed.

The cost of this report is £499 (plus VAT). If this report is not purchased, the process is not certified as compliant, and you and you client are liable for the basis of the decision. You will not be deemed to have used the regulatory permissions afforded to First Actuarial. While we do not currently require the purchase of the report, we strongly recommend the report is purchased.