At the Work Foundation Conference held recently, leading employment lawyers warned of the possible misselling risks of auto-enrolling employees into the proposed new National Pensions Savings Sscheme, and told employers to 'cross their fingers'! They believe that it would be sensible for employers to liase with third parties when giving pensions advice to avoid future mis-selling liabilities. They were also concerned that if state benefits are not reformed alongside the implementation of the savings scheme, employers could be held responsible for an auto-enrolment policy.
Our view:
Whilst we have predicted a compulsory pension scheme for six years now, we agree that there is a real risk of problems if employees are forced into schemes and then lose state benefits. Watch this space for more news. We assume the Government will absolve all parties from 'mis-selling' issues.