Employer pension contributions delay

[Deleted User]

Mine typically takes 2 weeks and when I queried I was told the employer sends a bulk payment to the pension provider which then needs to be allocated.

Farside71

Used to work for a large pension provider on the systems that took in pension contributions from companies.  It works both ways, there is an awful lot of administration and checking of payrolls to make sure contributions can be matched to the correct employee considering contributions change regularly, people come and go, people change names, and just general mismatching.  However I also feel companies don't treat it as a priority to speed up the transaction and they feel they are meeting their obligations.  It's a classic example of a system that has worked this way for a long time and no one really that interested in spending time and money to speed it up when companies have other priorities with their time and resources.

dunstonh

[Deleted User] said:

Mine typically takes 2 weeks and when I queried I was told the employer sends a bulk payment to the pension provider which then needs to be allocated.

That allocation, as they call it, takes less than 24 hours.  It's electronic at the provider's end.   It could be a CSV uploaded or it could be integration with the payroll system being used, but either way, the provider is not the one causing the delay.