Your client's ongoing duties
Automatic enrolment is a continuing responsibility for employers. Your client's duties do not end after their duties start date. You can help your client avoid penalties by understanding how they must meet their ongoing duties.
Your client has to keep paying contributions into their pension scheme, keep up-to-date records for their staff, monitor any changes in age or earnings, and manage requests to opt in or leave the scheme.
On this page
- If your client reports changes in their staff's age and earnings
- How to work out your client’s contributions
- Is your client’s staff opting out, opting in or joining a scheme?
- What information your client needs to record
- What is re-enrolment and re-declaration?
Understanding clients ongoing duties
Your client has a number of ongoing legal duties under automatic enrolment – they don’t end when your client has put their staff in a workplace pension scheme. Watch our quick video and find out what your client needs to do.
If your client reports changes in their staff's age and earnings
Your client will need to monitor any changes in age and earnings of their staff so they can identify if their staff become eligible for automatic enrolment. They must also check eligibility of any new member of staff.
If your client has any staff who are
- aged between 22 up to state pension age*
- and earn over £10,000 per year, or £833 per month or, £192 per week
your client must put their staff into a pension scheme and both must pay into it.
*If you or your client are unsure what the state pension age is you can use the State Pension Calculator to find out.
Your client’s business software, eg their payroll, should be able to support them with this monitoring.
For more information on how to assess who to put into a pension scheme, see our page on checking who to enrol.
How to work out your client’s contributions
Your client must calculate and pay their own contributions to their pension scheme on behalf of their staff, as well as calculating, deducting and paying over their staff’s own contributions.
Your client will have agreed contribution rates and when to pay them with the pension scheme when they were setting it up. The amount they must pay must be at or above the minimum amount set in law.
For more information about the minimum rates and paying contributions to a pension scheme, see our page on working out your client’s costs.
Is your client’s staff opting out, opting in or joining a scheme?
Opting out is when a staff member decides to leave their pension scheme within a month of being enrolled and get a full refund of any contributions they’ve made.
For more information on what to do, including issuing refunds, go to opting out.
Some staff who aren’t eligible for automatic enrolment have a right to opt in to a scheme your client uses for automatic enrolment. Staff who opt in are entitled to an employer contribution from your client.
Other staff, who earn under a certain amount, are entitled to join a pension scheme. Though there’s no entitlement in law for your client to pay an employer contribution for these staff, they can choose to if they wish.
To find out who can opt in or join a scheme, and what your client must do if their staff ask to do so, go to opting in and joining.
What information your client needs to record
Your client must keep up-to-date records about their staff, including who they’ve enrolled and when, information about their pension scheme, and the contributions they are paying.
To find out what information your client needs to keep about their staff and pension scheme, go to record-keeping.
What is re-enrolment and re-declaration?
Every three years your client will need to put staff back into their pension scheme if they have left it, and if they meet the criteria to be put into a pension scheme. This is known as re-enrolment. They will need to write to their staff in advance of their re-enrolment date to explain more.
More about re-enrolment and re-declaration.
Advanced guidance
This resource is aimed at professional advisers and employers with in-house pensions professionals.
- Detailed guidance 1: Employer duties and defining the workforce
Understand how employer duties apply to staff. - Detailed guidance 5: Automatic enrolment process
Includes more information about deducting and paying contributions, and the time limits for paying contributions. - Detailed guidance 8: Safeguarding individuals
Detailed guidance on supporting your clients to meet their new automatic enrolment duties. - Detailed guidance 9: Keeping records
Detailed guidance on records that must be kept by law, by both the employer and the pension scheme, as proof of compliance.
We need your email address
- Tell us who will be helping your client with re-enrolment
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- Update/check your contact details are up to date