Auto Enrolment Pension Single Director Company
Published / Last Updated on 27/02/2015
Video explains what one director, single employee companies must do to comply with auto-enrolment, work place pensions.
Transcript: Auto Enrolment Pension Single Director Company
“Hello there. Auto enrolment pensions for very small companies. That's the subject for my video this evening, you can tell I’ve got the lights on and that. It’s February 2015 and auto enrolment is now starting to ‘rear its ugly head’ for smaller employers, so smaller companies and where we are at the moment is basically in August for companies with 30 to 50 employees auto enrolment starts for you, you’ve got to look at setting up a pension scheme for your employees and then with effect from January 2016, so we’re about 10 months away, as I film this video, companies and employers with less than 30 employees: we all must look at having an auto enrolment, a workplace pension scheme in place.
Now, I have done a separate video already explaining what auto enrolment is, where fundamentally, it's all employers have to offer a pension scheme for the workforce and all of the employees are automatically enrolled in the pension scheme and then there are some minimum percentages of salary that has to be paid into the pension scheme. [And] usually that will be split, where both the employer and the employee must pay into a pension scheme.
[But] the subject for this video is: single director, single employee companies.
So if you are an owner manager of your own small company, how does auto enrolment affect you?
Well how it affects you is: you will still receive a letter from The Pensions Regulator asking you to comply with auto enrolment. So you will receive a letter because the Pensions Regulator doesn't know how many employees you’ve got. They just know that you're a small limited company.
Now you are, if you are a sole director, single employee company, you are likely to be exempt. Now they don't know this and if you don't let them know you will be fined but as a single director company you are exempt provided you haven't got any other employees. If it's just you, a one-man band, you are exempt but you need to write to them with specific information about:
- your company
- your registration number
- the reason why you believe you’re exempt and
- supply all of your contact details
Now, what I’ve done to make it easy for all single company directors out there who are thinking: “what I do with auto enrolment?”
Well, I've written a template letter for you to be able to send to the Pensions Regulator. So all I would literally do is: contact me, email me, go on to our website, click on the contact button and request a copy of that template and I'll email it to you and literally you can complete the blanks and email it to the pensions regulator and just then to confirm that you have an exemption.
So it’s actually nice and simple. Single [owner] company, one-man band, limited companies, where you are the sole director then you are exempt from auto enrolment for workplace pensions provided all of the set criteria are mentioned. If you’ve got two employees then you're not exempt and you’ll have to offer a scheme so if it's you and one other employee you may call for auto enrolment but if you're a one-man band then it's nice and simple but you must let them know.
If you don't let them know you face being fined. Contact me and I’ll email you my template letter. Thanks very much for watching.”
Get your free auto-enrolment exemption template letter: contact us.
