A benefits system which has many useful functions. One of these is to assist employers in determining who their eligible employees are for the purposes of auto enrolment on a month by month basis. It will track new members who need to be enrolled initially or existing employees who need to be re-enrolled at their respective three year point whilst also keeping records for The Pensions Regulator for the requisite 6 years.

The pension protection fund levy is one of the ways that the PPF funds the compensation payable to members of schemes that transfer to the Pension Protection Fund. The Pension Protection Fund was established to pay compensation to members of eligible defined benefit pension schemes, when there is a qualifying insolvency event in relation to the employer and where there are insufficient assets in the pension scheme to cover Pension Protection Fund levels of compensation.

Quantative Easing is an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the national economy when conventional monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank buys financial assets to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.

6 April 2006 was A-Day. A-Day marked the introduction of new government pension rules designed to make saving for retirement more straightforward. From A-Day, you were allowed to save your entire annual salary in a pension plan, up to a maximum of £215,000 in 2006-07( this was indexed for a period and has since been reduced down to a maximum of £50,000 in any one year).

In the 2000 Budget, the Chancellor asked Paul Myners, chairman of Gartmore Investment Management, to investigate possible distortions in institutional investment decision-making. Mr Myners published his report on 6th March 2001. Until the Myners Report, pension fund management in the UK had little in practice to do with the structure of pension liabilities. The Myners Report led to a radical change in pension fund investment in the UK.

An individual's qualifying earnings from an employment are their gross earnings in a 12 month pay reference period between the National Insurance primary earnings threshold and the 2006/07 upper earnings limit increased in line with average earnings (known as the qualifying earnings band). In 2010/11 terms, this means earnings between £5,715 and £38,185.

The process by which all employers will be asked to automatically enrol their eligible employees into a Qualifying Workplace Pension Scheme between Oct 2012 and 2016.Employers will also need to contribute to this scheme at a minimum level as will employees.

In short, this is established by an employer to provide benefits for employees and others and is managed by trustees who collect the contributions, hold the scheme’s assets and pay the pensions and lump sum benefits.  There is therefore a three sided relationship between the employer, the trustees and the members. There is little guarantee of the level of pension a member might receive although Trustees will take on a small amount of the investment risk.