Stakeholder Pension Scheme

courtney22

Just received my new contract and do not understand what the pension means. It states that the company will make available to you a stakeholder pension scheme. The company will not make any contribution into this scheme on your behalf. A contracting out certificate is not in force in respect of your employment.

Does this mean that there is no pension? Help please! Many thanks.

MissSarah1972

It means there is no company pension at present - see this link https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions-employers

It's only offering you the option to join and for you only to contribute

You do not have to join it!

courtney22

Thanks for the reply , il take a look now . I thought all company's now have to offer a pension and in all my previous jobs my employeer has paid into my pension as long as I did. Is this normal? Thanks

MissSarah1972

courtney22 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply , il take a look now . I thought all company's now have to offer a pension and in all my previous jobs my employeer has paid into my pension as long as I did. Is this normal? Thanks

No company haD to offer a pension at all. I have never worked anywhere that offered a pension. I would say it was normal as I know no different, others will say it's not normal. All depends what industry and where you have worked before.

Now there is a new law (see that link) and pensions across the board will come in place where the employer will have to contribute if you do too, up to 3% (I think that's the figure)

The bigger the company the quicker the law comes in to play for them.

Lots of people used to leave where I used to work as there was no pension, no sick pay only 20 days holiday etc and when they realised there were worse off than their last job, they were off.

mountainofdebt

It means that there is a sort of company pension scheme but the company won't contribute to it.

When I say its a company scheme, its the sort whereby the company will take care of all the administration for you, deducting contributions from your salary and paying them to the pension company etc

The idea behind this sort of pension scheme was that it had low admin charges and it was portable ie the employee could take the plan with them when they left the employment and either take it to another company's stakeholder pension scheme or continue paying into on his own