It was good to hear that Pensionsync have dropped their payroll charge this week. Payrolls that run Pensionsync (QTAC, Star, MyPaye and Bond among them) will be able to send and receive payroll data to and from providers like Legal & General, Peoples Pension, NOW, Smart, NEST and Aviva without fuss or bother. It really will be as simple as sending through RTI returns (and equally free).
I have long been a fan of pensionsync and its founder Will Lovegrove. But it’s been confusing dealing with them as some payrolls absorb its software costs , some charge it as standard and some give employers and their agents the choice of whether to use it or not.
We’re calling the process of converting all employers using pensionsync software “Pensionsyncopation” and we hope that as much of the industry that wants to use pensionsync will be pensionsyncopated by the end of the quarter as can happen.
Not the only choice!
We are not agents for pensionsync, though Pension PlayPen has a heads of agreement with its parent systemsync to work together. We similarly work with other data enablers, most notably Able and Payroo software which similarly offers a fully integrated AE service at no extra cost. We also work with eAsE , which offers a specialist service for accountants and other advisers(thought this is £5pm per employer).
More importantly – the largest payroll provider – Sage – has been busy building data integration to most of the serious pension providers including NEST and People’s Pension , we’re told that Standard Life and Aviva will soon be integrated and we hope more will follow.
We believe that in the long-term full data integration with payroll will become a hygiene factor and whether it is “direct to payroll” or via a service provider, it will become a part of the pension or payroll module purchased from the software provider. Pensionsync has just made this dream a lot closer to being a reality – well done them!
Free?
For many, “free” is a deeply ambiguous four letter word, typically linked with spam or scam. How can pensionsync afford to give up its main source of revenue?
Pensionsync is a data gatherer and it hopes that it can use its massive data processing capacity to generate value with employee benefit providers (who get perfect underwriting information) and employers – who get best rates, to operate a range of payroll orientated benefits. The model for this is Zenefits in the United States (see https://www.zenefits.com/platform/).
Since use of this platform will be voluntary, we can see no reason why employers should not properly regards pensionsync’s “free” offer at face value.
Pensionsync is also looking to end its subsidy to providers who currently integrate to pensionsync with the latter’s support “free”. Ending this cross-subsidy is welcome.
beware how you choose
Postscript; Beware cheap imitations.
Pension Pen likes pensionsync but not endorse its cheap and nasty pension comparison site. We’ll let pensionsync do the data integration, let’s hope they take their comparison site down!
