How long does it take for your payday pension contributions to reach your personal pension?

warrenb

Aviva for me and around 2 weeks

Rich1976

I get paid on the 25th of each month but my workplace pensions can arrive anytime from about the 4th working day of the following month up to the 22nd deadline . 

Some months it can be say the 18th of one month and then the 5th of the next. 

I did query this with my provider Standard Life and they said it depends on the date the employer asks them to collect the payment for everyone in the scheme.

DT2001

My OH is mainly self employed however one of the companies she works for gave all their itinerant/casual staff one year contracts. If your commitment (can be from 1 - 14 days) runs over the end of the month you get paid 6/7 weeks later. On the good side holiday pay is added and pension contributions made. The deduction for Oct 23rd reached the pension on the 23rd Nov. 

We have not queried it as we are happy to get 3% from the employer and OH’s contribution gains from no NI.

cloud_dog

My SW contribution has arrived variously from 15th to the 28th.

westv

I've just checked. Payday is around 25th of each month and contributions arrive in my pension by around 5th of the next month.

GibbsRule_No3.

My company are with L&G the dates they show going in vary. I had always queried the difference, I was looking monthly, due to not knowing when I might actually retire. During Covid the dates really went haywire, a couple of times it went the entire month without showing. The Union got involved, someone else must have raised it with them and asked our HR/Finance department, head of Finance sent an email apology saying the person responsible for the input was under great strain and had not asked for help, we were given a little bit of money as a compensation in case we had missed out on the markets and the company reported themselves to someone, as it is not allowed. They have not missed an entire month since but the days do still vary 2 - 12 drift has happened.

techno12

Payment always around the 19th the month after I'm paid in my work's SW scheme.

So, roughly a 3 week delay for some reason.

dunstonh

techno12 said:

Payment always around the 19th the month after I'm paid in my work's SW scheme.

So, roughly a 3 week delay for some reason.

Reason will be your employer choosing to wait that long.  

Most common reasons for employers delaying is to maximise interest or to aid with cashflow.

P1Fanatic

Funnily enough my payment arrived in my pension yesterday around 3hrs after I posted this thread. Its almost like they are watching lol. So thats the 13th which is by far the longest its taken for me. Not worth my time questioning it as they are not my employer now. But will be interesting to see how long it takes my new employer as also using SW.

P1Fanatic

dunstonh said:

 I've never understood why such variance - a couple of days maybe due to where weekends fall - but 5 days fluctuation?

Your employer must pass your contributions to your scheme or provider by the 22nd day of the month (19th if they pay by cheque) after they were deducted from your salary. 

Now I was last paid on Nov 30th. Today (Dec 13th) my pension contribution has not arrived with SW. I flagged this via my employer. And this is a snippet from their response:

Scottish Widows have changed the method they receive funds from <My Employer>, the pension will now show mid-month rather than at the beginning of the month.

In reality, the employer picks the date of the payment.  Not the pension provider.    For our payroll, after the schedule of payments has been submitted, up pops the calendar to select the date we want to pay the total contribution. 

I'm also curious what regulation the "statutory deadline" of 22nd of the month relates to as I could not find much on this.

I believe the pensions act 1995 laid out the requirement to pay within the "prescribed period" and later pension acts and then regulation built on that.

Interesting thanks. I am struggling to find the specifics in the pensions act - any pointers?

 I guess I will never know but it seems common place from the replies here that many employers are leaving it as late as possible. Tbh if I wasn’t used to seeing the earlier 1 week later payments I would never have even questioned it as that would seem normal.