Opt-outs and re-enrolment

How opt-outs work

If an employee is automatically enrolled but doesn’t want to join, then they can opt out.

If they do so within 1 calendar month, we’ll refund their contributions to you and you’ll need to pass the money back to them.
If they leave after 1 calendar month, then they’re ‘ceasing active membership’ and they won’t qualify for a refund. Any money paid in will stay invested.

How re-enrolment works

Every 3 years the government wants to put employees who’ve opted out, ceased active membership or reduced their contributions to below the minimum level, back into a pension scheme. It’s a process called re-enrolment.

Even if you don’t need to re-enrol any employees, you still need to re-declare your compliance.

Four steps to re-enrol any employees

As your first step you need to choose your re-enrolment date.

You can choose any date in a 6-month window, centred on the 3rd anniversary of your last re-enrolment date. This can be 3 months prior to or 3 months after the 3rd anniversary of your duties start date. On this date your payroll, HR and software processes must be ready to go.

Make sure you tell us your re-enrolment date. If you don’t, our system may stop you uploading your employee data.

The date you choose will be the centre point of your re-enrolment window in 3 years’ time.

It's time to re-enrol your employees

It’s easy to do using your  Online Services account.

Your employees must be re-enrolled on the re-enrolment date. The exact process depends on how you assess employee pension contributions.

Share the news with your employees

It’s important you keep your employees up to date with what’s happening – it could come as a bit of a surprise that they’re being re-enrolled. 

Would you like help to communicate re-enrolment news with your employees? Use our tailored toolkit today.

Within 6 weeks of your re-enrolment date, we’ll write to your workers to make sure they understand their workplace pension – including that they have 1 calendar month to opt out.

Update The Pensions Regulator online

You’re legally required to re-declare your compliance on The Pensions Regulator (TPR) website to show you’ve complied with your employer duties.
If you don’t complete it in time, you may be fined.

You have to re-declare within 5 months of the 3-year anniversary of your duties start date, or your previous re-enrolment date and once you’ve assessed and re-enrolled your employees (even if you have no one to re-enrol).

You’ll need to include details of yourself, the company, PAYE schemes and your workforce, as well as our details:

Workplace pension scheme
Pension scheme name – The People’s Pension Scheme
Pension scheme provider address – Manor Royal, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 9QP
PSRN – 12005993

When you’ve submitted your re-declaration to The Pensions Regulator, they’ll send you an acknowledgement letter. This completes your re-enrolment duties until your next re-enrolment window in around 3 years.

Assessment

Complete this assessment as part of the Step 2. to find out your re-enrollment process.

If so, you’ll need to prepare your employee data so we know who needs to be assessed for re-enrolment.

On the submission of employee data before your re-enrolment date, please include the employees who need to be re-assessed for re-enrolment and include ‘RE’ in the ‘Starter/Leaver Flag’ column (you must ensure this is mapped when uploading your file).

We’ll assess them under auto-enrolment rules and re-enrol those who are assessed as ‘eligible’

You can then remove the ‘RE’ flag on your next submission.

If so, check whether your payroll provider will be able to manage re-enrolment for you.

They may be managing the process for you automatically, but you’ll still need to re-declare your compliance with The Pensions Regulator (TPR).

Your payroll provider can assess which of your employees are eligible jobholders out of those who’ve stopped contributing. They’ll let us know which of your employees should be re-enrolled.

You may need to advise them to add a new auto-enrolment date to the data file for each employee you need to re-enrol.

You may also need to advise your payroll provider on whether you want to re-enrol any of your exempt employees.

If so, you’ll need to check your employee data includes everyone who should be re-enrolled.

You’ll need to add any employees that need to be re-enrolled when you submit your employee data to us.

You, or your payroll provider, will still need to continue ongoing assessment of all your employees as usual to keep their pension contributions accurate.

Resources to help you

Communication templates

Re-enrolment: the 3-year cycle

To help you through automatic re-enrolment

Guidance for employers

On re-enrolment from The Pensions Regulator (TPR)