Barnett Waddingham has announced that it has teamed up with Standard Life to develop auto enrolment services for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The partnership reflects the growing need for auto enrolment solutions in the SME market. It is estimated that there are more than 30,000 companies with workforces between 50-250 that will need to be auto enrolled in the next 18 months.
Damian Stancombe, head of employee benefits at Barnett Waddingham said: ‘There is increasing behaviour in the marketplace which suggests that there is a growing fear of an auto enrolment ‘saturation point’ in the SME space, which may leave many companies out in the cold when it comes to complying with their auto enrolment staging date.
‘We are looking forward to developing our relationship with Standard Life in a way which will allow us to create an auto enrolment product with the specific needs of the SME market at the core of it.’
Alan Reid, workplace distribution director at Standard Life commented: ‘We are entering an important period which could define the success of auto enrolment. Demand from SMEs for support around implementing a qualifying workplace scheme will increase dramatically and we will see more and more businesses looking to good, quality advisers for guidance.’