Whats considered a "good" employer pension? Me 5% employer 3%?

tigerspill

Mine was me - 8%; company 11% (max)

Croeso69

Mine is employee min 3% with company matching 1-1 up to 6%. 

I pay in 25% for an overall 31%. 

Salary sacrifice saves a lot of NI and my employer adds 50% of their employer NI saving to the pension.

ischofie1

Anonymous101 said:

ischofie1 said:

I have to agree with other comments in that Co’s that pay min pension cont are generally stingy & possibly best avoided. I consider myself lucky in that my Co pays 15% for my min cont of 5%. It’s done via Sal sac which helps & includes a 7 times death in service factor. 

They're excellent benefits for private sector.
Do you mind me asking what industry you work in? My limited anecdotal experience is that benefits such as pension and death in service are often comparable within an industry but may be very different industry to industry.

I work as a design engineer for a company that manufactures heavy duty equipment to the mining industry. 

ischofie1

Malthusian said:

ischofie1 said:

I have to agree with other comments in that Co’s that pay min pension cont are generally stingy & possibly best avoided.

My employer pays auto-enrolment percentages (albeit on the whole earnings) but is exceptionally good to work for. They trust their employees to work out for themselves how much of their pay packet should be going into their pension and are very generous in other ways. And they operate salary sacrifice and pay in their own 13.8% NI saving, which brings it a bit closer to the 1-1 matching with the employer pocketing the NI saving that is the standard for average-earning jobs.

But I still agree with your post. Small companies like my employer are the exception, not the general rule.

15% employer matching for 5% employee is very good - benefits like these are often the result of a collective agreement when the final salary scheme was closed.

You are actually spot on. These figures were negotiated as a collective agreement during the closure of the DB scheme. There was also other add ons we were able to negotiate, such as pensions being included on overtime pay which they didn’t initially want to include. 

techno12

My company just does the statutory minimum of 3% for my 5%.
However, they do give all their NI saving to the pension via salary sacrifice.
As I've recently turned 50 I'm now doing a 58% sacrifice to maximise this - they wouldn't let me go higher ;-)

cfw1994

triplea35 said:

My son works in the Hospitality sector and has had various employers. All without exception have been extremely stingy, Low salaries to start with, compounded by absolute minimum pension benefits, 3 month wait before joining schemes and disregarding the first £6240 of earnings. 5% employee/3% employer in those circumstances are ridiculously low.
As I have taken an interest in this, and have been in the fortunate position to do so, I have made significant contributions to his pension. As an only child I suppose he will also be fortunate enough to rely on some inheritance in the future.

But it really does concern me on the numbers of people who may be uninformed and will have a very poor future to look forward to!  

Interesting.
Daughter has her first post-grad job, also really in the hospitality sector (manufacturing goods).  Her company is great - if she puts in 6%, they put in 14% - it astonished me!
My tech company will match to 6%, which I think is "reasonable".
Both sal-sac, FTW 
I feel that companies can often be judged on how well they help employees plan for the future, how generous they are.....

JustAnotherSaver

Strange this. Wonder if most people on here are actually in decent paid jobs. Maybe. Maybe not. 
I suspect most that come here have an interest in I vestments, saving, DIY money managing etc and maybe these people are generally not the bottom-line kind of people. Again, just wonderings, I could be wrong. 

My workplace pension is bare minimum. They'd pay me zero if they could get away with it. Those I know are also paid the bare minimum. In fact I only know of 1 person really who is anything above minimum, the rest are minimum. 
My social circle does not really involve people earning 30k, 40k, 50k etc. We are generally minimum wage earners or maybe slightly above but not much. Coincidence that our pensions are as little as possible? Maybe, maybe not. 

ratechaser

Mine - salsac, just over 23% total (including employer matching my 7%). Very happy with that especially as they cover all platform and fund charges for the scheme. Fund choices are on the limited side though compared with other occupational schemes I've been in.

(Banking - if anyone is tabulating these data points  )

Gary1984

My last perm job it was 10% er and 3% ee. The company was in life insurance. I decided to match their 10% but they didn't match anything extra so 20% in total. 

geewhiz

My company pays 12% by default and then matches my salary sacrifice up to 4% and uplifts my payment by 10% (I think this is due to them saving NI conts).

I choose to pay 4% so I get 12% + 4% + 4% + 0.4% = 20.4% for my 4% contribution.