This morning Pension PlayPen launches “Measures of support”. the result of nearly 6 months research into how intermediaries and employers see the workplace pensions they are using to enroll staff.

We will be making the report generally public during the day but this morning we are having a launch to introduce the findings to “key stakeholders”. I like the phrase “key stakeholders”, it’s a phrase that sounds good, means nothing and enables you to move on without letting on you don’t actually know who is going to bother turning up.

Those reading recent blogs will have picked up that there’s an absence of guidance and direction from the top – as to pension providers participating in auto-enrolment and their relative merits.There is also a lack of evidenced data to support the swashbuckling statements by practitioners.

For the first time, Measures of Support, sets out to use data from a sample group of some 250 intermediaries and employers and a hardcore of half that number who provided detail qualitative feedback on how providers are doing.

We intend to repeat the dose every six months through the remainder of the initial period of auto-enrolment (till the end of 2018).

So who’s hot?

The people’s favourite is the People’s Pension, which has consistently shown itself the market leader in support to employers and their advisers over a wide range of measures

Legal & General are also hot, though they cannot quite match People’s. They appear the blue bloods of auto-enrolment with strength in depth.

And not so hot?

Nest fill third place on our grid with support levels that reflect their strong ethos of self-service. NEST are doing what they say on the tin and are valued for their support materials rather than hand-holding.

NOW have been in the pits for much of 2015 having fitted a new engine at the last of the year and they’ve spluttered a little (like Honda Mclaren). There’s a great car waiting to get out, but 2015 results have not been what they (or their supporters would have wanted

The future of the research

We have digital copies of the research available which can be accessed from this link.

As with all projects of this type, it’s value is as much in the longitudinal comparisons as in the snapshots. So v2 of Measures of Support, which we will publish in Q3 2016 will build on the work of this report.

For now, it has been the financial advisers who have been able to talk, we expect the balance of respondents to change over the next six months as numbers of employers escalate and adviser capacity (relative to demand) diminishes.

The future of our work depends on the kind and dedicated people who take time to complete the surveys we put out. If you are one of them, thanks very much. If you would like to work on Measures of Support v2, please drop a line to henry.tapper@pensionplaypen.com .