It’s hard to believe that it has been a full year since Your Island Pension (YIP), Guernsey’s new Secondary Pension auto-enrolment scheme, went live in January 2024. We are now more than 12 months into YIP operations, and I’m delighted to say that it’s got off to a good start.
YIP is a States of Guernsey (the Guernsey government) facilitated scheme, developed to ensure that all Guernsey employers have access to suitable, low-charge pension provision to meet their new duty to enrol all eligible workers into a workplace pension automatically.
Following our selection to manage the YIP scheme in March 2022, Sovereign had to get straight down to work in planning and preparing for implementation. Our core objective was to create a scheme that was easy, simple and affordable, and the feedback from YIP clients – both employers and employees – suggests that we have delivered on that.
Implementation for the YIP scheme was phased. Companies with more than 25 employees were required to automatically enrol eligible employees into an approved pension scheme from 1 July 2024. They were followed by companies with 11 to 25 employees on 1 October 2024 and companies with six to 10 employees on 1 January 2025.
In terms of numbers, we had received more than 350 employer applications to join YIP by the end of 2024, plus a small number of self-employed applicants. We launched 200 employer schemes during 2024 and, with almost 100 more schemes being launched in January 2025, we expect to bring our total membership up to nearly 4,000 employees.
There remain two operative dates in 2025. Companies with two to five employees are required to automatically enrol eligible employees into an approved pension scheme from 1 July 2025, while companies with only one employee must do so by 1 October. We anticipate that most small employers will join YIP, so these dates are likely to be even busier for us than last year’s operative dates.
Besides the statistics, a key measure for us is employer and employee feedback. We carried out a survey of employers who joined YIP and the feedback has been very positive. Some 95% of respondents agreed that the application form is easy to understand and complete, and the same agreed that the onboarding process is simple and easy. The responsiveness and engagement of the team is rated more than 4.5 out of 5. Importantly, 95% confirmed that they would recommend YIP to others.
This is particularly pleasing because a great deal of time and effort was spent to ensure that the employer experience should be as painless as possible and the feedback suggests that, for the most part, we’ve been able to achieve that.
Alongside the coordinated and proactive project work with the Guernsey government and Guernsey Revenue Service that was key to the successful delivery, Sovereign has also engaged with NEST Pensions in the UK, which operates a similar scheme but, of course, on a much larger scale. We were fortunate to be able to attend workshops with NEST’s senior leadership team to learn from their experiences and this helped to guide our planning and delivery.
This included a key focus on collaborating with payroll software providers to ensure that the YIP process was aligned with employers’ existing systems in terms of salary, returns and submissions. Sovereign developed a specific application programming interface (API) that payroll providers can use to integrate, which facilitates a single point of data entry for employers.
Besides the technological focus, we wanted to truly be the ‘people’s pension’ and bring YIP into the community. We have held drop-in sessions around the island, and one in Alderney, so people can come and chat in person, and we’ve also provided employee chats in workplaces throughout Guernsey.
In addition, Sovereign has created a ‘Knowledge Hub’ which gives access to a range of documents and tools to help employers and employees get the most out of their pension. We’ve also provided an award-winning financial wellness portal to increase financial literacy and reduce financial stress.
Throughout the year we have prioritised building our local client servicing team to ensure that the level of support for employers and employees is high. Following a local recruitment campaign our client servicing team has increased by eight full time employees, and it is testament to the hard work and efforts of that team that they’ve been able to join the business, learn the systems and deliver exceptional service during a period of high pressure, high volumes and workload.
2024 was also an exciting year for the rest of the Sovereign pension business with the take on of large international pension and savings plans as the business continues to grow both domestically and internationally.
Looking forward to 2025, our key focus is to ensure that those employers and employees who join YIP have a similar experience to those who have already joined and that we will continue to deliver a solution that is easy, simple and affordable.
