Eight providers have achieved overall gold awards for their workplace pension and auto enrolment offering in Benefits Guru’s ratings.
Benefits Guru, powered by the Finance Technology Research Centre, has revealed Aviva, Royal London, Scottish Widows and Standard Life are among those to receive the gold achievement across multiple product offerings.
The ratings are designed to provide clarity and guidance to advisers and employers, and in turn to improvise the industry’s service and products available to consumers.
Eight providers have been awarded ‘overall gold’ awards in the 2022 ratings, across multiple product offerings.
Ten out of eleven providers achieved 17 ‘overall gold’ awards for their auto-enrolment propositions. Two providers asked not to be benchmarked.
This year, as well as benchmarking the core principles of a pension, such as governance, fund choice and retirement options, Benefits Guru included some new areas focusing on the tools and services pension providers are offering to aid with the ‘cost of living’ crisis.
These include financial resilience, salary sacrifice and member apps and portals.
Now in their eighth year, the annual ratings are designed to assist advisers, providers and employers in their decision-making process and highlight which providers have the greatest strengths in different areas of their pension propositions. The final ratings are compiled based on a data set and in-depth analysis of over 10,000 data points.
Each entry receives a gold, silver, bronze or not rated, rating for their overall score plus a series of key underlying sub-categories in recognition of individual areas of excellence.
The sub-categories reflect the most frequently selected features chosen over the last 12 months by advisers, using FTRC’s quality analyser online comparison tool.
Benefits Guru said it provides a deep level of clarity to distinguish the differences between each proposition.
FTRC and Benefits Guru head of workplace research Jason Green, said: “It’s important we continue to evolve our ratings to ensure they reflect the wider issues members and employers are experiencing including the cost-of-lLiving crisis.
“With household purses being squeezed, members may be tempted to reduce their contributions, which could have a devastating impact on their pension pot when it comes to financing their retirement. Employer education, supported by providers, is key.”
sonia.rach@ft.com
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