16th June 2013

Scottish Widows: Expert resource when you need it

According to a recent Towers Watson survey into the capacity for providers to cope with the flood of automatic enrolment schemes providers will hit capacity in May of this year.  Given this is only very early on into the flow of employer’s staging dates this is a great worry.  From what I know about the detailed planning that is going into map resource capacity versus demand at Scottish Widows it isn’t a version of the truth I recognise.

What is absolutely clear though is that there is a huge amount of demand from employers for access to automatic-enrolment expertise.  This rate of demand will increase as more and more firms get their staging date letters through. 

Scottish Widows have responded to this need for technical facts and figures by re-focusing our financial planning team, who you may already know as the authors of Techtalk.

Their first task in this new role was to produce factsheets on the key areas that our sales and scheme implementation teams were being asked about most regularly. 

Fact Sheet 1 – Pay Reference Periods

This time 18 months ago I had never heard of a Pay Reference Period (PRP) but it is increasingly clear that all involved in this market need a good understanding of how they work.

They determine when earnings trigger automatic enrolment.  In this case they pay reference period will match the frequency that income is paid, such as weekly or monthly

In the coming additions I will share with you what other auto-enrolment fact sheets area available.

You can access the Pay Reference Period fact sheet and all the other technical support at Financial planning | Scottish Widows Extranet

Pensions, Auto-Enrolment