FAQs for Employers

The Pensions Regulator says it is your legal duty to write to all your staff individually about auto enrolment.

If we manage your statutory communications for you, we either send an email direct to the employee (if you’ve given us their email address) or we send you a PDF with their payroll number so you can send it to the correct employee.
Please encourage your employees to provide an up-to-date email address in their online member account. This enables us to keep them informed about their workplace pension.

Yes. We can send statutory communications to your employees, including entitled workers and non-eligible jobholders who don’t join the Scheme.

We don’t charge you extra to send this information by email – either direct to each employee, if you’ve given us their email addresses, or to a common mailbox managed by your HR or payroll department. They’ll be responsible for forwarding the communications to your employees.

If we send statutory auto enrolment communications to your employees on your behalf as part of your service, we can send communications by email:  

• direct to each employee, if we have their email address, or
• to your common mailbox – a central email address, for example in your HR or payroll department, to be forwarded on to each employee within the statutory timescales.

It’s important that we have an up-to-date mailbox address that we can send these communications to in order to help you remain compliant with auto enrolment legislation.

We recommend a centrally managed email address is used for this purpose and checked regularly, as each PDF communication is sent as a separate email, with each employee’s payroll number.

We recommend you check the mailbox every day as you’ll be responsible for sending the PDFs on to the relevant employees within the statutory six-week timescale.

How to update your common mailbox address

You can change the common mailbox address for your organisation in our Gateway employer system.

1.    Log in to Gateway and go to ‘Employer Settings’ in the top right-hand side. Click on the drop-down box to go to ‘Company Details’.

2.    Scroll down to ‘Communication Settings’ and edit the ‘Common mailbox address’. Enter the central email address you’ve chosen to receive the PDF communications and select the tick box when it’s complete.

To view any of the communications that have been sent to a member, go to ‘Employees’ and click on the relevant member. Scroll down to ‘Communications’ and select the communication you want to see.  

Each separate PDF will be delivered to your central email address individually, making it easier for you to identify which employee should receive the communication.

You can also email us at clientsupport@nowpensions.com to tell us what your new mailbox address is.

Once you’ve chosen your re-enrolment date, we’ll send you re-enrolment reminders.

If you have employees to re-enrol we’ll send them enrolment notices, along with opt-out confirmations if any of them opt out.

You can download our ‘Re-enrolment explained’ leaflet to share with your employees.

Each year we send all employees with benefits in the Scheme an annual benefit statement. This gives them a snapshot of the value of their pension savings with us for the previous Scheme year (up until 31 March) showing:

• how much money they’ve built up in their pension savings
• the contributions they, and you as their employer, have paid
• how investment has affected the value of their pension savings
• the costs and charges they’ve incurred during the year, and
• how much they could have at their retirement age if they stay in the Scheme.
• what they could do to save more.

The communications cover four areas of the auto enrolment process.

Which communications we send to your employees will depend on the information you upload in your pension data file. For example, we won’t send postponement notices if you’re not using postponement.

Yes, we can send statutory auto enrolment communications to your employees on your behalf. We include this as part of your service – we don’t charge you extra.

We can send communications by email:  

• direct to each employee, if we have their email address, or
• to your common mailbox – a central email address, for example in your HR or payroll department – to be forwarded on to each employee.

You’re legally obliged to tell your employees about auto enrolment into a workplace pension scheme and explain how individuals will be affected by auto enrolment, including their obligations and choices. You must do this within six weeks of your auto enrolment duties start date. 

If you ask us to manage your statutory auto enrolment communications (assessment, enrolment and postponement letters), we’ll do this for you.

We won’t send any communications before your duties start date, as this isn’t a legal requirement.

We’ll send out the first communication once you’ve uploaded the first payroll file. This usually goes out within 24 hours of a successful file upload.

You’re legally obliged to tell your employees about auto enrolment into a workplace pension scheme and explain how they will be affected by auto enrolment, including their obligations and choices. You must do this within six weeks of assessing them for eligibility for auto enrolment into the Scheme.
If you don’t manage your communications promptly and effectively, you risk not meeting your auto enrolment duties under the law.
We can do this for you. We’ll send out assessment, enrolment and postponement communications to the following employees:

• eligible jobholders – employees who must be put into a pension scheme that you pay into
• non-eligible jobholders – employees who can ask to opt into your auto enrolment scheme
• entitled workers – employees who won’t be auto enrolled into a pension scheme, but who can ask to join a pension scheme that you pay into (as long as it’s a qualifying scheme).

We sometimes have to adjust the value of members’ pension savings if there have been errors. For example, there have been times when our systems haven’t shown the most up-to-date information.

If we’ve had to adjust a member’s total fund value, we’ve detailed these adjustments on their benefit statement. These figures reflect adjustments during the Scheme year. Adjustments can be a debit or a credit.

This is because these members have more than one pension savings record with us. Reasons for this could include:

• they left the Scheme and re-joined at a later date
• their payroll frequency has changed – for example, from weekly to monthly
• they’ve worked for more than one company using NOW: Pensions as their workplace pension provider.

If a member gets several benefit statements for the same Scheme year, they don’t supersede each other – they’re for separate records. They’ll need to add all the values together to give the total value of the fund in the Scheme. Each statement has a unique reference number and will also show the NOW: Pensions contract ID

The current benefit statement only shows contributions paid up to 31 March 2023.

If a member makes their contributions through a salary sacrifice scheme you, as the employer, pay contributions on their behalf. As a result, the statement will show all contributions as employer contributions.

They might have more than one member record, so will receive two or more benefit statements showing contributions against each record. See Why have some members received more than one benefit statement?

There could be several reasons why a member might not get a benefit statement.

• We hadn’t received any contributions for the Scheme year to 31 March 2023 and we don’t hold any contributions for earlier periods.
• We haven’t got their complete home address or email address.
• They’ve opted out of the Scheme.
• They’ve received a refund of their contributions, transferred out or taken all their pension savings.

Yes. If a member joined between 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 their statement shows the total contributions and charges that have been paid within the period.

Members will get a benefit statement if:

• they paid contributions into the Scheme between 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023
• they’re deferred members – they’re no longer paying contributions to the Scheme but had funds invested at the end of the previous financial year.

Members who joined the Scheme after 31 March 2023 won’t get a benefit statement for the Scheme year ending 31 March 2023. They will get their first benefit statement next year for the Scheme year ending 31 March 2024 – however, they can see their fund value at any time by logging in to their member account.

Employees won’t get a benefit statement if:

• they have left the Scheme with a fund value of zero
• their pension savings have been disinvested.

Members can view their benefit statement on a secure online website at Statements.nowpensions.com.

• If we have their email address, we send them an email explaining how to log in to the website and see their benefit statement.
• If we don’t have an email address for them, we post a letter to their home address which explains how to log in to the website and see their benefit statement.

We issue benefit statements every year within 12 months of the end of the Scheme year on 31 March.

We send members of the NOW: Pensions Trust (the ‘Scheme’) annual benefit statements relating to the most recent Scheme year.

The Scheme year runs from 1 April to 31 March. Pension regulations state that annual benefit statements must be produced within 12 months of the end of the Scheme year on 31 March.

Find out how members can access their 2022-2023 benefit statement.