<p>Employees that sign up to their employer’s pension scheme prior to the launch of the company’s auto-enrolment could boost their retirement fund by as much as £10,000.</p>
<p>Launched last October, <a href="auto-enrolment">http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers/main-steps.aspx">auto-… of pension programmes</a> began with the UK’s largest companies, with smaller companies implementing it over the next few years. Eventually, about 10 million people will be enrolled into pension schemes through their workplace. </p>
<p>Currently, seven out of every ten private sector workers do not have a pension plan in place, which means they likely will have very little to live on upon retirement. </p>
<p>Auto-enrolment is the government’s way of helping to ensure that all working Britons begin saving into a pension and have some money set aside to maintain a comfortable standard of living when they retire. </p>
<p>The scheme will make employment pension programmes an opt-out system, rather than the opt-in system that it is now. </p>
<p>Under the new rules, all companies will be required to offer a pension scheme to employees, though this may be subcontracted to a default programme run by the government called Nest. Employers will also be required to contribute minimum payments, set by the government, toward worker pensions. </p>
<p>Currently, the average employer contribution rate is about 6.6% of an employee’s salary but under the new programme, that contribution will start at 1%. </p>
<p>Workers are being encouraged to elect for the maximum monthly contribution to their pension fund because many companies throughout the UK will also increase their contribution to match their employees’. </p>