Oracle has been awarded the National Association of Pension Fund’s (NAPF) Pensions Quality Mark (PQM) for its new group personal pension.
The mypension@oracle scheme, which was installed and communicated by Secondsight in November 2010 through to March 2011 to Oracle’s 4,700 UK employees, has been identified as one of the leading workplace pension plans among all UK employers.
The PQM is a benchmark for good pensions, which is designed to encourage employees to save into them so that they can get closer to the kind of retirement incomes they expect in old age.
Oracle pays a matched 6% contribution and gives back 50% of the employer national insurance savings it makes through salary sacrifice into the employees’ pension plan for any contribution over 6%.
Employees can opt to save all or part of their bonus or commission and their flexible benefits fund into the scheme. All of these options ensure that the total average contribution far exceeds 10% of salary; the minimum benchmark to obtain PQM.
Joanne Segars, chief executive of the NAPF, said: “Good employers understand the importance of providing good pensions to their staff. We are delighted that Oracle has achieved our Pension Quality Mark and is setting an important example to organisations in its field.
“The UK is experiencing a pensions saving crisis. To help tackle it, we need more employers like Oracle to offer good quality pensions, which are crucial if people are to build a decent income for retirement.”
Mark Bingham, partner at Secondsight said: “There is little point in providing an employer pension unless employees are given the guidance needed to make the right decisions for their own circumstances. This is one of the reasons why Oracle felt it was important that its new pension scheme was communicated clearly and simply
to its UK workforce.”
For more on best practice group personal pension plans