NEST or NHSPS

tiredeyes

Hi All
Wife has had a letter from NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) saying she has been auto enrolled into the scheme.
she works as an Auxiliary Nurse and earns over 16.5K pa
with overtime and enhancements she clocks up to £30K pa.
She has worked at the same hospital for 3 years and opted into the NHSPS as soon as she could (2.5 years ago)

The letter says she can opt out by the 14th June 2013.

I always thought her NHS Pension Scheme was the best in the world as it was a final salary pension...?
Is this true or not ?

Who should she talk to to get an understanding of what to do?
or
any suggestions ? :huh:

hyubh

tiredeyes wrote: »

She has worked at the same hospital for 3 years and opted into the NHSPS as soon as she could (2.5 years ago)

The letter says she can opt out by the 14th June 2013.

I always thought her NHS Pension Scheme was the best in the world as it was a final salary pension...?

NEST has absolutely nothing to do with the NHS Pension Scheme. Do her payslips show NHS scheme contributions still being deducted?

JoeCrystal

hyubh wrote: »

NEST has absolutely nothing to do with the NHS Pension Scheme. Do her payslips show NHS scheme contributions still being deducted?

It might have. I was surprised when I found out that among big employers which are using NEST as their pension scheme for auto-enrollment is University of Glasgow, University of Manchester and University of Southampton, RWE Npower plc and so on. Basically it could be a divide between employees who joined the proper pension scheme properly and employees who got auto-enrolled instead. It is perfectly fine for an employer to do this.

But really, she should be paid into the NHS scheme anyway.

In my research, I did find out that small of the number who are not entitled to join the NHSPS. They have to use an alternative qualifying pension scheme for re-employed pensioners or those with over 45 years service within NHSPS. An NHS employer have to choose one and NEST was mentioned as one of the choices.

Sorry that I got gone off the topic...

Cheers,
Joe

tiredeyes

Just spoke to NEST
they say it is an additional pension scheme
so if the work place put 1% in, she has to put in 1% too.
and she gets tax relief on it too.
but will this mean her tax relief for her NHS PS will be removed?

Yes her payslip still showing pension contributions of around £80 a month

I wish these companies would send better information. Now I have to trawl and find out why, what if, pro's & cons, etc....

have also emailed pensionsadvisoryservic org uk for some help.

dunstonh

NEST is for people who do not have conventional occupational pension schemes. It should not be additional to the NHS pension.

tiredeyes

Bizarre ?
why would the NHS put her into NEST when she has paid into NHS scheme for 2.5 years, and is still paying in ?
really annoying having to find out, waste of my time grrr :mad:
I have txt the wife asking her to find out phone number for NHS pension people so she can talk to them Tuesday on her day off.
like we have nothing else to do :mad:

hyubh

JoeCrystal wrote: »

It might have.

Not really - due to employment legislation (TUPE, 'fair deal'), you can't just suddenly go from being in the NHS scheme to being in NEST, unless you've left your old job and started another.

hyubh

tiredeyes wrote: »

I have txt the wife asking her to find out phone number for NHS pension people

Surely it's your wife's payroll/HR you need to get in contact with, not the NHS scheme administrators.

tiredeyes

Thanks for the replys
The wife has said other Nurses have had this company send letters saying that HR have put them forward.
It's really bad practise of the NHS HR to just start putting people willy nilly into additional pension pots. Now I have to log on to NEST and cancel this otherwise an auto payment of 1% of the wife's wage would start being deducted and put into NEST.
Think this is bad practise.
They should have asked her first if she wanted to be put into an additional pension.
She would have said no, can't afford to. She pays extortionate amounts of tax for doing bank shifts.
Let alone fork out more on a 2nd pension which will get consumed by the government when it feels like dipping in
NHS HR Fail

jamesd

Given her situation and this being additional, I think she should opt out of NEST. It's very much the lemon of the big auto-enrolment schemes.

In general, NEST is mostly good only for those who are quite close to retirement, who don't care enough about their pensions to do the work to find something better and whose employers also don't care enough to do the work to pick something better. It's particularly bad for those who are quite young, due to its combination of poor investment choices, ban on transferring money out to something better, relatively high costs for the choices it does offer and low gain investment choices automatically made for new joiners.

The regulations about auto-enrolment may force employers to enrol some people into schemes if they aren't already in a workplace pension scheme. That doesn't have to be NEST, it can be any of the huge number of schemes that meet the rules.

She's right to be unhappy, so are you and so are the rest of those who work with her. Her work HR has not done a good job here.

When it comes to NEST there's a good general rule: if you see the NEST word, your employer is being lazy and not giving you the best option or anything close to it. Good schemes do not need to ban people from transferring money out, they attract them and keep them by being good options instead.

jem16

tiredeyes wrote: »

They should have asked her first if she wanted to be put into an additional pension.
She would have said no, can't afford to.

We recently got a letter from the Teachers' Pension Scheme saying that we were all to be automatically enrolled despite the fact that I have been paying into it for 37 years. It seems it was automatically generated to every employee.

Are you absolutely sure it's NEST?

She pays extortionate amounts of tax for doing bank shifts.

She does not pay any more tax on her bank shifts than she does on her main job. The only difference is that her tax-free allowance is applied to her main job so some of it is tax-free and the rest taxed at 20%. With her bank job she has already used up her tax-free allowances so all of it is taxed at 20%.

In the end she pays exactly the same tax with 2 jobs totalling £30k as she would with 1 job at £30k.

EDIT : As to the bank work - is it possible that the enrolment into NEST (if that is definite) has come from there?

From the figures you have quoted, £80pm sounds like it's coming from just her main job as that would work out as a 6% contribution of £16.5k. So it sounds like she is not paying any contributions from her bank work into the NHS pension as 6% of £30k would see monthly contributions of £150.

Is the bank work not NHS?