Who has my pension for a month?

2poortoretire

My workplace pension is debited from my salary ever month on the 28th but I have noticed it does not appear in my Scottish Widows pension scheme for another 4 weeks , normally a few days before my next payday. Scottish widows insist this is “Industry practice “ to credit the investment a month in arrears ! Is this correct ? Who is then benefiting from holding my money for 4 weeks ( not me )?
Has anyone else had this issue?

JoeCrystal

Well, it takes three months for my money to leave the payslip and I see the contributions appear in the pension scheme so it is something you have to put up with. Besides, the member contributions deducted from pay must be paid to the pension scheme by the 22nd day of the month following deduction. It can be a case of your employer waiting until the very last minute before paying it out. They got until 22nd in the next month to pay up so four weeks sound about right.

westv

My contributions appear in my Aegon a/c maybe a week after payday.

Albermarle

It is normal , so not worth worrying about .

Thrugelmir

Your employers payroll team has more to do than simply send just your contribution across. They'll be admin to deal with as not just pension contributions that they deal with either. 

ex-pat_scot

It's normally by 21st of the month following deduction.
The pension scheme will have to do all sorts of reconciliation and allocation of a bulk payment from the employer, before they alllocate your funds to your pension account.

dunstonh

Scottish widows insist this is “Industry practice “ to credit the investment a month in arrears ! Is this correct ?

Yes.  Many firms won't pay the pension contribution or yours/their tax until the last possible point.

 Who is then benefiting from holding my money for 4 weeks ( not me )?

Your employer.

Farside71

ex-pat_scot said:

It's normally by 21st of the month following deduction.
The pension scheme will have to do all sorts of reconciliation and allocation of a bulk payment from the employer, before they alllocate your funds to your pension account.

This is correct and a major part of the admin.  If the amount doesn't reconcile as some members have changed their premium to what is expected etc it all has to be sorted out.  This has caused major issues with a large pension provider recently who has moved from a largely manual process to a new system that should be automated but takes much more work to sort out and affects more than just the specific members who don't reconcile.

I think though that however long the provider takes to deal with incoming premiums and apply them, the investment date should be the date that the money was received into the provider.  This may help understand how long it takes the employer to send.

I've noticed I get a message about 10 days after payday on my legal and general workplace pension that they are working on crediting a premium which is an indication that they've received it, before it shows in my online valuation

MakingUpGround

Mine does this too, the credit only just goes in before the next wageslip

Thrugelmir

dunstonh said:

Scottish widows insist this is “Industry practice “ to credit the investment a month in arrears ! Is this correct ?

Yes.  Many firms won't pay the pension contribution or yours/their tax until the last possible point.

 Who is then benefiting from holding my money for 4 weeks ( not me )?

Your employer.

Company bears the cost of performing the admin though. 

Scrudgy

Mine is usually 10 days from payday to showing up in the pension statement