Financial advisers specialising in group pensions can generally reduce the charges of your existing scheme, reducing the cost of running employer pension schemes.

Save on charges

With the launch of Stakeholder Pensions the charges on new pensions have fallen dramatically.

In our view, an Occupational Money Purchase or Group Personal Pension Scheme should not, in most cases, be paying more than if you had a Stakeholder scheme in place. You can often find that financial advisers can improve schemes by simply giving up some of the commission they receive if nothing else, increasing the competitiveness of your scheme with minimum effort on their part. When setting up a new scheme - whatever the type of contract - you should aim to price it at a lower cost than the standard 1% stakeholder charge.

Employers offer these schemes as part of an overall remuneration package to help attract, retain and reward the best staff in a fiercely competitive employment market. It therefore could be very important to review the current benefits package you offer.

Part of an adviser's standard service should be to review the terms of any 'rate driven' benefits on an annual basis to ensure terms remain competitive.

This range of group schemes you can now consider under employee benefits schemes include: