Trying to keep on top of the latest news and developments in today’s busy world is no easy task, our latest webinar gave some top tips to save you time running your Nest accounts and updates on the pension industry.

With presenters from across Nest, the webinar covered salary sacrifice and how to run this for your clients, a live demonstration of how to move members between groups and an update on pension industry changes.

The presentations and live demo are available below to watch again or share with colleagues:

Top time saving tips –

 

Speakers :
John Hale – Head of Technical Account Management
Gary Ball – Senior Technical Account Manager
Paul Terry – Pensions Technical Manager

The slides from the webinar are available here: June payroll professionals webinar

After the webinar we received some additional questions, answers can be found below:

  • I work in an Accounting Practice and have been given the role of payroll for our clients and their employees. As payroll and pension are all new to me, are there any webinars of how to set up the Nest pension correctly, how employees opt out, and guidance of when we should be setting up an employer on Nest? We have also noticed over the last 6 months that not all employers. employees receive their welcome pack which has the letter opt out which we would need to place on the system if the employee wishes to opt out of the pension.  We would have to currently put insufficient funds?

There is information on the Nest website which will give you the answers to the questions raised. Some specific links which cover the questions asked are here:

Setting up Nest employer account – first step is here How to sign up for a Nest account | Nest pensions and then go to each step shown in the box on the left hand side of the page.

It typically takes approx. 30 minutes to set up a Nest employer account, maybe a little longer the first time you do it. That can be done at any time, but ideally as soon as the employer knows they have to provide an auto-enrolment pension scheme for their workers.

How an employee opts-out – How do I opt out of Nest? | Nest pensions

The only way an employee can opt-out is by one of the three routes shown in the link. It is important that the employer / payroll do not offer alternatives to that. They would not be deemed an opt-out and contributions should continue to be deducted and paid over to Nest.

If the employee has not received their welcome letter they can access their own Nest account here https://www.nestpensions.org.uk/schemeweb/NestWeb/faces/secure/USER_REG/pages/activateYourAccount.xhtml

They will be able to see their Welcome letter in their Nest inbox.

If for any reason they cannot access their account, then they need to contact Nest on 0300 020 0090 and we will assist them.

An employee can opt-out in the first month of membership – that starts on the third working day after the worker has been enrolled into Nest. If they opt-out then they receive a refund of all the pension contributions deducted from their pay. We pay back the money we are holding for the individual to the employer’s bank account nominated when the employer account is set up. The employer / payroll then need to combine that with any contributions they have deducted but not submitted to Nest and refund the total to the individual.

It is also possible for an employee to ask their employer or Nest for contributions to stop. This is not an opt-out and whilst you can stop future contributions there is no refund of what has already been paid. See How do I stop contributions? | Nest pensions

In both of the above cases if the employee qualifies at the employer’s cyclical re-enrolment date they must be put back into the pension scheme again.

  • Can I ask if the Tax relief is still claimed for an individual if they salary sacrifice as the total contribution is from the Employer rather than both?

There is no tax relief to be claimed where the employee’s share of the contribution is paid via salary sacrifice. The salary you are paying is reduced by the sacrifice which means the employee gets their tax relief automatically – they pay less tax (and National Insurance) because their gross pay is less.