Legitas introduces GPP and will trial Nest

Recruitment firm Legitas has introduced a group personal pension (GPP) for its 70 employees and is to trial the national employment savings trust (Nest) with a group of temporary staff currently on its books.

The GPP, provided by Scottish Life, is the first employer-funded pension scheme to be offered by the company. It will be used to auto-enrol employees when Legitas reaches its staging date next year and employer contributions will vary for different levels of staff.

Legitas will pilot Nest with 200 of its 20,000 agency workers as part of its efforts to iron out any difficulties ahead of its staging date in February 2013.

David Allen, chief executive officer at Legitas, said: “When you have got 20,000 people with a churn rate of approximately 300 out of 500 each week, if you did not have something trialled, tested, battened down and working, you would be in serious trouble.”

Nest was deemed to be the best option for Legitas’ temporary workers from an administrative and compliance point of view, said Allen. “Nest was only ever going to be the [provider] that could deal with an industry where people go in and out with such regularity,” he explained.

“A temp may be on assignment for three or six months, then off assignment, resting for a while, then back on.
“The administrative problems represented on a pension compliance front were really quite daunting. I think that Nest was the only provider to have come up with a realistic scheme that we are satisfied will service our temps.”

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Read more about group personal pension (GPPs) plans