Royal Mail happy with 16% opt-out

Royal Mail has confirmed only a 16 per cent of it’s 15,000 weekly paid  employees chose to opt-out of workplace pension provision. This is lower than Royal Mail thought they’d get but higher than some companies who have already gone through the process.

Only recently we commented on Asda’s announcement that they had achieved an 8% opt-out rate. You can read more here. The opt-out rates in these larger employers is much lower than many industry commentators had anticipated. Some commentators had anticipated 20%-30% opt-outs.

Some interesting feedback from Asda was that the average age of those opting out was 47. It looks like there may be a core of people who are die hard non-savers who will still opt-out. Getting these individuals to save may prove to be a challenge only achievable by the removal of the opt-out.

Our view is that as the staging dates apply to employers with less employees we’ll see the opt-out rate increase. Smaller employers are unlikely to be able to afford the kind of communications exercise that the Royal Mail and Asda undertook.

It’s all fascinating in a kind of nerdy way! Watch this space.

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