Employer > Automatic enrolment > Key facts > What is the effect on pension schemes?
What is the effect on pension schemes?
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You must register with the Pensions Regulator (tPR) that you have an automatic enrolment scheme in place by four months after your staging date. You’ll also have to re-register roughly every three years.
If you have an existing scheme in place the good news is you can use it to meet your employer duties, so long as it meets three sets of criteria. These are explained below.
Automatic enrolment criteria
The scheme must:
- meet the qualifying criteria
- not prevent the employer from automatically enrolling, opting in or re-enrolling a worker
- not require a worker to provide information or make a choice in order to remain a member of the scheme.
Qualifying criteria
The scheme must:
- meet the quality requirements
- be an occupational, personal or stakeholder pension
- be tax registered.
Quality requirements
- You must make contributions to the pension scheme in respect of the jobholder.
- The minimum contribution must be at least 8% of qualifying earnings of which at least 3% must be paid by you.
- all the benefits payable must be 'money purchase' benefits.
Minimum contributions
The minimum contribution level required to meet the quality requirement is based on a band of earnings called qualifying earnings.
Alternatively, you can certify that your scheme meets the minimum requirements using a scheme definition of pensionable salary. To find out more about qualifying earnings and certification, read the following sections.
Qualifying earnings
