Corrigans | Financial Services | Insurance Services | Coventry | West Midlands

It is because of our personal approach that so many of you have been with us for so many years.

We work with each of you individually in order to inspire confidence, provide security and offer support.

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You will hear and read a great deal about the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), previously known as Personal Accounts, over the next three years whether you like it or not, but on 2nd March 2010 our Government proudly announced that they had appointed the only applicant as the new adminstrator for NEST. The good news is that the winner is .... TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES, a company with call centres based in India and Pakistan. Their chief executive officer and managing director Mr N Chandrasekaran was obviously delighted, stating "we are happy to be part of a project that helps UK society". It does not appear that our Government has done a great deal of research into TCS or even visited this link http://www.lieffcabraser.com/lawsuitagainsttata.htm which is about a major class action law suit against TCS in America for serious unethical and fraudulent employment practices. As Jeff Goldblum famously said in The Fly "Be afraid - be very afraid".

In 1988 our Government could see that the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) was running out of money and would eventually "go bust". That is why they allowed everyone the choice of continuing to accept promises made by the Government about paying them an extra income in retirement linked to their National Insurance Contributions (NIC) record or having part of that tax paid into their own pension instead. It made sense at the time because even though the Government bribed everyone by paying back more NIC than they should have into those pensions, at least the problem was not getting worse quite so quickly.

No doubt the primary intention was not to confuse everyone, but the Government changed the name from SERPS to The State Second Tier Pension (S2P) a few years ago and they have already announced that it is coming to an end on 5th April 2012 to be replaced by these NEST pensions.

They are going to be compulsory even for casual workers and operate in the same way as any other Government tax on pay i.e. the employer does the work for free and pays the tax over into a black hole whilst fielding queries from the workforce. To soften the blow the new tax will be phased in until every employer is paying a minimum of 3% of pay above a minimum threshold and every employee is paying a minimum of 5% on the same income WITH TAX RELIEF AT THE STANDARD RATE ONLY.

Only a civil servant would think that the best way of introducing NEST is to have 43 different starting dates which all depend upon the size of the business and/or its PAYE reference number with the result that for almost half of the British workforce it appears a lottery when it will affect them.

Thankfully there is a more palatable solution.

Corrigans have kept a close eye on the developments surrounding this and has now spent more than three years designing and negotiating a superior solution that reduces the cost for employers and their workforce, restores higher rate tax relief where appropriate, takes most of the administrative burden off employers and delivers more choice and flexibility for the workforce at much less cost than a Stakeholder pension with the likelihood of better investment performance too.

If you start planning now it will save you money in the longer run and employers will be more competitive than their peers who choose to wait for the Sword of Damoclese to fall. Please talk to Corrigans to find out more.