Company Pensions

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Company Pensions

Company pension options

One of the many benefits provided by companies and business owners for their employees is a company pension plan. As an employer, you can choose to set up a Group Defined Contribution (DC) Retirement Plan or a Group Personal Retirement Savings Account (Group PRSA) arrangement.

There are a number options available to you:

Each pension arrangement has different merits so it is important to get professional advice to select the most appropriate company pension scheme for you and your employees’.

To find out more about the company pension options available to you please read our brochure on Providing Benefits for Employees.

Company pension plans from Bank of Ireland Life

Our Group DC Retirement Plan and Group PRSA Plan both offer:

  • Competitive and transparent charges;
  • A service tailored to members of the plans;
  • Online access for employers and employees to view their plans;
  • A wide range of investment funds.
  1. Investment Choice –Group DC Retirement Plan.

    Working with our best in class investment fund managers we offer a broad range of funds, with options to suit every risk appetite.

    Our investment choice solution offers:

    • Flexibility – employers can opt to offer choice on the main scheme or on the Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC) scheme only.
    • Choice – members can pick from a suite of pension investment funds.
    • Individual Retirement Investment Strategy (IRIS) – Ireland’s longest-running pension life styling strategy tailors investments for each member depending on his or her term to retirement.
      For more information on the funds available, please read our Investment Choice Brochure.
  2. Investment Choice – Group PRSA

    We offer your employees a wide range of funds to choose from, partnering with two of the leading fund managers in Ireland. We recognise that everyone is different, which is why our PRSA investment funds include options to suit individuals at different stages in their lives, with different needs and retirement goals.

    For employees who do not wish to make an investment decision, a default investment strategy is available called the Individual Retirement Investment Strategy (IRIS) Retirement Fund. IRIS – Ireland’s longest-running pension life styling strategy – tailors the investment strategy for each member, depending on his or her term to retirement.

    If you are interested in a Group PRSA arrangement, please read our Employers Guide to Group PRSAs.

Factors to consider

Attracting and retaining key employees and top talent is an important consideration for any company. A competitive employee benefits programme is an essential part of helping you do just that. At Bank of Ireland, we have worked with thousands of companies to help them meet the challenge of developing a competitive and sustainable benefits programme. We offer advice and support in the key areas of:

  • Retirement benefits;
  • Trustee services;
  • Death in service benefit;
  • Disability and accident cover.

What do you have to do, today?

There are a number of minimum requirements that you must put in place, today, under current legislation. These include making a pension scheme available, making sure you’re your employees are informed of the scheme and helping employees to get advice and information about what is on offer. It is important that you do this on an ongoing basis and not just when employees join the company.

At present, an employer is not obliged to contribute to a company scheme but can choose to do so.

What you will have to do in the future?

Following the release of the Governments Roadmap for Pensions Reform 2018-2023, a commitment has been made to comprehensively overhaul Ireland’s pensions system. The biggest commitment is the introduction of auto-enrolment, or a mandatory pension scheme, which, according to the Roadmap, will be introduced in 2022.
It is expected that both employers and employees will be obliged to contribute a percentage of employees’ salary to a pension scheme to help them fund their retirement.

What do you want to do?

Providing a company pension plan demonstrates your support for your employees to have an opportunity to save for their retirement in a tax-efficient way. If you contribute to the scheme, you may benefit from corporation tax relief.

One of the most important aspects to consider is the level of contributions that you intend to pay on behalf of your employees. Many company pension plans operate on a contributory basis where the employer matches the employee contribution up to a fixed percentage of basic annual salary.

A typical contribution level would be to match contribution levels up to 5% a year based on an employee’s basic annual salary. However, you can decide on a different level of contribution subject to compliance with Revenue rules and employment equality legislation.

It is important that you and your employees keep in touch with how their retirement savings are doing. Our market-leading, digital, company pension platform – MyPension365 provides employers and employees access to your plan’s information including membership details, payment histories and members’ retirement accounts together with the ability to transact online – for example, to make investment fund switches and contribution changes.

We are here to help

At Bank of Ireland, we have been providing administration and consultancy services for corporate, occupational pension schemes since 1990 and investment management services for over 40 years. We work with thousands of companies to help them meet the challenge of developing a competitive and sustainable employee benefits programme by designing, implementing and administering a cost-effective solution that meets their individual needs.

We provide the experience, support, and know-how needed to ensure that your company’s pension scheme meets its full potential. We do this through offering modern pension scheme design solutions, tailor-made member communications and market-leading, web-based technology. We help you to design and deliver a benefits programme that will ensure you get the most from your investment while also giving your employees benefits they will value.

So what are the next steps?

Our team of expert corporate pension consultants are available, nationwide, to meet with you, understand your requirements and talk you through the whole process.

Make an appointment, today.

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Advice on Bank of Ireland Life products is provided by Bank of Ireland Insurance & Investments Ltd.