Workplace pension providers achieved their strongest performance to date in Benefits Guru’s latest annual pension ratings.
Now in their ninth year, the annual ratings cover over 10,000 data points and are designed to help advisers and employers in their decision-making process by highlighting the different areas of strength for individual providers.
Providers are given a gold, silver or bronze rating for their overall score as well as a series of key underlying sub-categories across workplace pensions and auto-enrolment in recognition of individual areas of excellence.
Benefits Guru said that nine providers including Aviva, Royal London and Scottish Widows, had achieved ‘overall gold’ awards for both their workplace pension and auto-enrolment offering, while Hargreaves Lansdown was awarded a gold rating for Workplace Pensions, improving on its silver rating last year.
Standard Life was the only provider to achieve a clean sweep of overall gold awards and underlying gold awards in all sub-categories across both the Workplace Pension and Auto-Enrolment ratings.
In addition to benchmarking against existing criteria such as member communications and auto-enrolment functionality, Benefits Guru introduced additional benchmarking criteria to reflect the changing environment. These included ESG within the investment and fund options rating, which saw all providers achieve a gold rating, and a Consumer Duty benchmark as well as considerations around scheme set up and restructuring and transferring services.+
Despite providers achieving their best performance to date, Benefits Guru said one area that experienced weaker performance was the member app and portal benchmark which looks at the availability and functionality of apps and member portals for pension savers.
Jason Green, head of workplace research at FTRC and Benefits Guru, said: “We have worked with the providers over the last six months to renew the areas we benchmark as well as the questions which make up the scores. It’s important we continue to evolve our ratings to ensure they reflect the wider issues members and employers are experiencing.
“This year’s exceptional scores reflect how providers are constantly developing and improving their offerings to ensure the best outcomes for their members.”
