Opting In and Joining Automatic Enrolment

Automatic enrolment schemes must meet three sets of criteria:

Automatic enrolment criteria
To meet the automatic enrolment criteria, a UK scheme must:
Meet the qualifying criteria & not prevent the employer from automatically enrolling, opting in or re-enrolling a worker and not require a worker to provide information or make a choice in order to remain a member of the scheme.

Qualifying criteria
To meet the qualifying criteria, the scheme must:
meet the quality requirements, be an occupational, personal or stakeholder pension scheme and be tax registered. Employers must register with The Pensions Regulator that they have an automatic enrolment scheme in place within four months of their staging date then re-register roughly every three years.

Qualifying requirements
The requirements for personal/stakeholder pension schemes are:
There must be an agreement between the scheme provider and the employer that the employer must make contributions on behalf of the jobholder of at least 3% of qualifying earnings. There must be an agreement between the scheme provider and the jobholder where the jobholder can be required to make up any difference to 8% of qualifying earnings all the benefits payable must be ‘money purchase’ benefits and the employer must be able to deduct any jobholder contributions from pay.