Aviva has launched an auto-enrolment ‘quote and apply’ system, which it claims takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
The fully automated system is aimed specifically at business advisers, financial advisers, accountants and payroll providers who can help small and medium sized enterprises and micro employers through their staging dates.
During this year, 480,000 SMEs are due to set up a workplace pension scheme.
Andy Beswick, managing director of business solutions at Aviva, said advisers and accountants are going to play a vital role and demonstrate their value, as hundreds of thousands of small employers set up workplace pensions for the first time.
He said being able to get terms and apply in a few minutes, for businesses of any size, should be an attractive proposition to advisers and accountants.
“Once a business has its workplace pension scheme set up with Aviva, we then invest a lot of time in supporting and educating employers on what auto-enrolment is and how to use our online systems.
“We have found that this approach gets the employer client off on the right footing with regards to their obligations and workloads under AE.”
Adviser View
Robert Lewis, director at Heritage Financial Solutions, said Aviva’s proposition could be very interesting.
He said: “As financial advisers it is difficult to make money from auto-enrolment, despite clients wanting us to take the problem away from them. Any system that can speed up the process will be a welcomed introduction.
“One of the main hassles with auto-enrolment has always been the integration with payroll providers, which appears they’ve taken steps towards.
“My honest feelings were that smaller businesses were going to suffer from lack of choice, because of the lack of profitability to the mainstream life offices,” he added.
Colin Rodger, director at Edinburgh and Glasgow-based Alexander Sloan Financial Planning, agreed some pension providers have turnaround times which stretch into weeks simply to get terms for a scheme, or in fact to decide if they will take an employer on.
ruth.gillbe@ft.com
