· Nine providers – including Aviva, Royal London and Scottish Widows achieve ‘overall gold’ awards for their workplace pension and auto enrolment offering
· Standard Life is the only provider to achieve a clean sweep of overall gold awards, and gold in all sub-categories across both Workplace Pension and Auto-Enrolment Ratings
· Benefits Guru benchmarks new areas focusing on Consumer Duty, At Retirement member support and ESG
Benefits Guru, powered by FTRC, has today revealed the final scores for its annual workplace pensions and auto-enrolment ratings. Now in their ninth year and covering over 10,000 data points, the annual ratings are designed to assist advisers and employers in their decision-making process and highlight which providers have the greatest strengths in different areas of their pension propositions.
In what has been the strongest performance to date, ten providers have been awarded 13 overall gold awards across multiple product offerings.
Standard Life was the only provider to achieve a clean sweep of overall gold awards, and underlaying gold awards in all sub-categories across both the Workplace Pension and Auto-Enrolment Ratings.
Hargreaves Lansdown was awarded a gold rating for Workplace Pensions, improving on its silver rating last year. Two providers asked not to be benchmarked.
In addition to benchmarking against existing criteria such as member communications and auto-enrolment functionality, this year saw the introduction of additional benchmarking criteria. These included ESG (within the Investment & Fund Options rating) where all providers achieved a gold rating, the timely addition of Consumer Duty as a benchmarking metric, as well as considerations around Scheme Setup and Restructuring and Transferring Services.
An area that saw weaker performance among some providers this year was the Member App & Portal benchmark, which examines the availability and functionality of apps and member portals for pension savers.
Jason Green, Head of Workplace Research at FTRC and Benefits Guru, commented: “We have worked with the providers over the last six months to renew the areas we benchmark as well as the questions which make up the scores. It’s important we continue to evolve our ratings to ensure they reflect the wider issues members and employers are experiencing.
“This year’s exceptional scores reflect how providers are constantly developing and improving their offerings to ensure the best outcomes for their members.”
Head of Partnership Support at Secondsight commented: “The workplace pensions industry has come a long way since auto-enrolment launched, and the Benefits Guru ratings show how providers are constantly innovating and enhancing their product propositions. As such, it is important that employers periodically review their existing provider and ensure that their current needs are being met. The ratings and comparison tools provide an excellent service for this.”
The full ratings can be found at BenefitsGuru.co.uk – FTRC’s insights information site for advisers, employers and providers in the workplace pensions market.
