Pensions & Financial Wellbeing

For small, medium and large businesses

Put your people in control of their financial future

Pensions are a vital part of any employee benefits package. You may already be fulfilling your auto-enrolment obligations or taking the very first step. Whichever it is, we can help make sure the workplace pension scheme you use complies with regulation and is the right fit for your company.

Under auto-enrolment legislation, all employers must:

  • Set up, manage and automatically enrol employees into a qualifying workplace pension scheme
  • Provide employees with the correct pension information
  • Review the eligibility of their workforce
  • Make a minimum employer contribution

Common concerns include:

  • Researching, selecting and implementing the most appropriate workplace pension scheme for your organisation
  • Once in place, ensuring good scheme governance
  • Ensuring that fund choices reflect the ESG goals of your business and employees
  • Communicating to your employees
  • Amount of admin time needed to implement and run auto-enrolment and make pension contributions
  • The extra costs to the business


How we can help you

Our specialist pension team will:

  • Provide advice to select the most appropriate pension provider
  • Help with the scheme set up
  • Review and advise on pension contribution structures
  • Provide guidance on tax efficiency of different contribution methods
  • Liaise with your payroll provider to ensure payroll and pension interact in an efficient way which minimises administration
  • Engage with your employees post implementation to help them understand how the scheme works, and their options
  • Provide ongoing scheme governance to ensure the scheme structure, provider administration and performance continues to remain appropriate and in line with expectations
  • By working closely with you we can help you implement Salary Exchange (sometimes referred to as Salary Sacrifice)

Make sure your business is taking advantage of the most favourable way to make pension contributions. Consider implementing salary exchange.

Guide

Guide to Salary Exchange - Getting the most from your workplace pension

Employers can offer employees a salary exchange pension, sometimes called a salary sacrifice pension, which can help employees, and employers, save money on National Insurance (NI) contributions and avoid the need for higher rate tax payers to claim higher rate tax relief.

How we can help your employees

We can help your employees prepare for their financial future by:

  • Providing general pensions guidance and run consultant-led sessions where your employees can discuss all aspects of retirement planning
  • Presenting the benefits of the scheme to your employees annually, to enable them to personalise their pension plan to match their own retirement objectives
  • Delivering financial education programmes to educate employees on key financial areas. This can help to support employee wellbeing
  • Creating a tailored benefits communication strategy so that your employees understand and make the most of the benefits you offer them

We can also incorporate your pension scheme within a wellbeing programme to help ensure that your employees are maximising their employee benefits

Member communication

Using our experience and expertise we work harmoniously with you to create and execute engaging communications that are powerful. Keeping it simple yet relatable to your employees, helping you to bring your benefits to life.

We can provide a range of dynamic courses, webinars, videos and associated collateral to support financial education and engagement on:

  • Early years
  • Building & protecting your financial future
  • Pre-retirement
  • At retirement
  • Managing your money
  • Workplace loans and debt management
  • Estate planning and taxes
  • My benefits
  • Enhanced benefit communications

Frequently asked questions

A workplace pension is a way of saving for your retirement that's arranged by an employer. 

Usually both an individual and employer have to pay into the pension under auto-enrolment rules. Contributions are deducted by the employer from the employee’s pay and paid into the employee’s pension.

All employers have to provide their workers with a workplace pension scheme, and pay a minimum contribution into the scheme. This is called 'automatic enrolment' and is a legal requirement.

By law, every employer with at least one member of staff has duties, including enrolling those who are eligible into a workplace pension scheme and contributing towards it.

This is called automatic enrolment because it is automatic for staff – they don't have to do anything to be enrolled into a pension scheme, but it is not automatic for employers.
 

Put simply, it's an opportunity to boost retirement savings using a workplace pension scheme, with the benefit of an employer contribution and the Government providing help either as tax relief on the employee’s contribution or via lower tax from any salary sacrificed. The savings held within the employee’s pension are not normally accessible until age 55.

Yes an employee can opt out of an employer's workplace pension scheme after they've been enrolled. Up to 30 days of notification of enrolment, they can still opt out at any time, but any payments they've made will stay in their pension pot for retirement rather than be refunded.

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What to do if you are experiencing financial difficulties

We recognise that the current economic conditions are putting pressure on many households and businesses. At Howden, we are committed to finding ways to assist our customers who may require additional support during these times.

If you’re currently facing financial difficulty, please speak to us about your insurance policies by:-

-contacting your Howden Service Team; 
-calling Howden on 020 7623 3806;
-using the Enquiry form.

Employee Benefits Statement - Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing is part of the Howden Group. Registered in England and Wales under company number 2248238, with its registered office at One Creechurch Place, London EC3A 5AF. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.