#296: Everything You Need to Know About Ireland’s Auto-Enrolment Pension Scheme

0:00This is a PSA. If you are in the top rate of tax in Ireland and you are in this auto-enrollment program, you shouldn't be. And you should, within six months, that should be your wake up call, set your alarm and set up your private pension from that because you're leaving money on the table. You're leaving basically 15 euro out of every 100 on the table right now.

0:26Hi folks and welcome to another episode of Stock Club. Today I'm joined by Ralph Benson to talk about the new auto-enrollment program that launched at the start of the year here in January. Ralph is one of the founders of MoneyCube, a company set out to make investments and pensions easy, transparent, and profitable for the people of Ireland. Ralph, welcome to the show. Hi, Mike. Good to be with you. Yeah, and it's a very timely episode, this one, which is your idea, actually, to come out. So on the last Thursday of the month, a lot of people will notice a lighter paycheck today with this new auto-enrollment program, which made a lot of news and a lot of headlines when it came out.

0:58But this is when people are really going to feel it both employers and employees so let's just kick it off very basic and kind of describe the auto auto enrollment problem for people who don't uh people who haven't heard of it or people who need a kind of recap i suppose yeah i think uh don't they say there's a monday around now that is kind of misery monday after blue monday yeah yeah yeah and nobody's gotten paid and there's nothing left in the bank account and you're you know eating beans and rice or whatever but i think it might have to shift to to a thursday this year because a lot of people are going to be seeing their first contribution into this auto enrollment scheme uh pop out of their paycheck on thursday so or whenever they get paid in around now so what it is really is an attempt by the government to create a system that where people will automatically save for retirement that all sounds very sensible nothing wrong with that you know In fact, it was originally due for launch in 2006.

2:01So, you know, two decades in the making. Just the 20-year delay. It's like a children's hospital. Yeah, it's in line with most Irish infrastructural change. But anyway, the good thing is it has actually launched, and approximately 800 ,000 people are expected to be the beneficiaries of it. So it's important, it's needed. Like many developed countries, Ireland's demographics are changing. There's going to be a lot more people in retirement versus the number of workers to support them, and that has to be funded somehow. you know so so a system where those people automatically have money put into some kind of retirement savings account is a good thing and you know it's designed to come in in a gradual way so that although you know people will experience a hit to their pocket on Thursday when the paycheck arrives it's in the initial years is relatively light increasing over over the course of the next decade Yeah, so it's just worth singling out exactly the details.

3:13So the auto enrollment program is coming in for private sector employees aged between 23 and 60, earning more than€20 ,000 a year. Correct. And this is, as you said, covers 800 ,000 people, which is crazy, really, because the important part about this is that it's only covering people who do not already contribute to a payroll pension, which I'm surprised at the level of numbers there. Almost a million people in the workforce don't have any form of payroll pension. That doesn't mean they're not saving for retirement. And like, obviously, at my Wall Street, we go into stock picking, which is not payroll pension.

3:49It's a different form of retirement planning. but still that number is huge to me just before we get into the scale of it i just wanted to discuss the actual details as well so it's one and a half percent employee contribution one and a half employer contribution plus 0.5 state and that will rise as much as six percent six percent and two percent by 2034 so it's very small as you mentioned it's very small to start off with one and a half percent of your paycheck which you know if if things are tight you're going to feel but that advances as hopefully your wages advance to in the next 10 years or so.

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5:17Sign up today, email frank at mywallstreet.com and if there's a discount going, he has it. Yeah, correct Mike. I guess they're trying to strike a balance, right? So it probably would be near impossible to table a 6 % hit both to the employee's gross pay and to the employer's employment cost in a one area. So this gets phased in over 10 years. So in years one to three, it's 1.5%. The next three years, it's 3%. The final three-year period, years seven to nine, it's 4.5%. And then from year 10 onwards, it's 6%. I think that is still lower than the levels you're seeing in Australia and other places that have had this for many years.

6:07But at that stage, you're beginning to make a meaningful impression on people's retirement savings. You asked about what happens to the money then, and I guess part of the way the government has launched this, which I admire, is that they have said, let's just get this out the door, and there is some stuff that we will have to figure out later. So there are some surprising unknowns in connection with how this actually works. For example, it hasn't really been discussed how you can actually take money out of these retirement funds. So that's a big open question. Is this in terms of the opt-in or down the line when it's actually?

6:53Down the line, yeah. Down the line, so when it comes to your retirement age. Yeah, which is kind of the whole point. You know what I mean? There are things like that that are going to need to be figured out. And I think the fees, which is a kind of question you'd ask about any private pension and look for value and so on, remain opaque on this. So they have appointed three well-regarded index fund managers and active managers, I suppose, but effectively known as index managers. So BlackRock, biggest manager in the world, Amundi, biggest manager in Europe, and Irish Life is probably the biggest manager in Ireland.

7:29So, and those three fund managers are, I guess, get a portion of each pot split out to invest and grow. Yeah, I remember like when you're talking about a pool of 800 ,000 people, do you know what I mean? They'd be queuing up. So it is important that this is done, obviously, by the book and all the rest. So is it fair to say that this scheme, obviously, it's incredibly accessible and it's appropriate for a lot of people, but it's definitely not suitable for everyone. Yeah, I think that's right. Like, if you go back to the true purpose of this, in my view, is making sure that, you know, there's a kind of baseline there for people in retirement in decades to come, okay?

8:14So this is not going to change your life and make you wealthy, and it's not intended to. What it is intended to do is make sure that, you know you can eat and you've got a basic level of income in retirement particularly in a context where ireland's state pension which these days uh pays you know around 15 and a half k per year is not going to be sustainable by the time you're hanging up your boots you know we just you can see in the demographics uh the state will not be able to afford that by the time um you are drawing it down and it will look very different so i think part of this is about enabling you know the state pension to become a less prominent feature of, or less prominent building block of people's income in retirement, and an element of private funding to become more normal and more widespread.

9:05So I'd like to expand on that then, because this has been described by many as a ticking time bomb, not just in Ireland, across Europe, the problem with the state pension And this European, what's the exact term I'm looking for? The European contract? The pan-European contract. Okay. The social contract of the pensions. And the issue is, to really simplify quite a complex concept, is that Europe is going through an aging population where there will be more retired people than workers eventually. and the pension system is buoyed by working people paying into it for the retirees that seesaw really if it goes the wrong way it becomes unsustainable and that's where ireland is going in terms of an aging uh population where all the major european countries are going basically and so what what does the future look like when we talk about an unsustainable state pension it's It's been such a kind of bedrock of people's retirements.

10:09The uncertainty, the way people talk about it now, it's quite unnerving for people to hear. So what does the future look like? Would it become means tested? Would the pension age be pushed further and further back? What are the kind of possibilities? Yeah, good question. A number of things are likely to be considered, and some of them have been tried. There's already been an attempt to raise the state pension age. there is already an option where you can defer taking your state pension and receive a bit more when you do begin to take it you know so but i i expect i mean it's quite a serious change you know what i mean so when you look at the ratio of the number of workers supporting each person drawing a state pension like it's radically different you know so like i i expect no single thing is going to be able to to sort this out you know the bottom line is the state pension will come to us later which you know in some ways is perfectly reasonable because our kind of healthy working lives you know like life's life quality of life and kind of age expectancy for healthy years has risen significantly and the state pension hasn't really changed that much and the proportion of physical labor to on physical labor has completely shifted as well which is an important thing to say.

11:26Yeah, yeah. So, like, I think, you know, if we're clear-eyed about this, it will pay less, at least in, you know, value terms, you know, so there may be nominal kind of inflation adjustments over the years, but they're not going to be as exciting as they have been. And it will likely kick in later. And potentially it will get means tested, you know. I guess by the same token, you know older people tend to vote um and so they are kind of an important uh political voice and that will that will weigh in the balance as well right very much so and i think this is the i was reading an article just last week around the reactions around europe and obviously france you know macron tried to bust bust it up from 62 to 64 like 62 is crazy young when you look at where ireland is is ireland currently 67 going up to 68 is that correct it's 66 you can get 66 going up and it's going to go up to 67 soon for a certain demographic yeah um but you know france is like basically collapsed the government over this and like it had the most wide-scale strikes it's ever seen even like a very non-strikey nation like denmark has pretty much had enough as well when it comes to it germany is going through it too it's such a hot button issue and i guess a lot of it comes down to fairness yeah well there's a whole intergenerational fairness question that hasn't really been discussed in in european societies and that's what's nice about auto enrollment is that it you know it is funded right like so uh you know if you put the money in your employers put the money in then that's that's your but just like just like a private pension would be but like the bottom line is like one way or another like a you know they will inflate it away uh the state pension liability a little bit and and we'll try and make adjustments to it because because otherwise the bond market is gonna uh you know give them the answer yeah and then i guess this auto enrollment not this auto enrollment but this talk of pensions in general should be a real wake-up call for anyone who was kind of not maybe thinking retirement but even just thinking okay well I can rely on the state pension at the very least which mightn't be the case in 30 years yeah yeah absolutely it's I mean it's a good thing in that sense it has it's put the topic on the table and not just for individuals but also employers you know so employers have all had to over the last quarter or so consider where you know you need a position on this you know at a minimum you know anyone who employs people listening to this should be auto enrolled on should be registered on myfuturefund.ie which is the the site that is kind of managing it one of the ironies of auto enrollment is the first thing you need to do is manually register for it but we'll we'll leave that to one side and so certainly employers should do that but also So you need a position vis-a-vis your staff, right?

14:31Like, so are they being auto-enrolled? Is this an opportunity where you put in place an occupational pension scheme? What are the pros and cons of each, you know? And a lot of employers have been having really high-quality conversations with their advisors and with their people over the last few months to be ready for that. So that's great. Let's put the topic on the agenda a little bit. Yeah, and, like, you know, there's a duty of care to your employees for sure, but there's obviously been pushback as well because you're basically adding another cost for employers in a time where it's very tough for a lot of business owners what what what has the pushback been around has it just been in general you're adding more you know non-negotiable costs or is there kind of something more deep-rooted in that um well i think uh like it varies from different employers like what our experience has been in terms of our corporate pensions business Like, you know, for many companies, the answer has been obvious, right?

15:29Like, so if you have had, if you're in a business where you've got a young workforce, maybe they tend to, you know, the turnover is relatively high just to the nature of your work, that kind of thing. Then auto-enrolment is a great solution for you. And it's just a, it's a kind of messaging and communications bit, you know. I think if you have a workforce where it's maybe, I don't know, you're in professional services or something and tend to have high average incomes where most people are on the top rate of tax, then similarly, you'd be, I would say, very unwise to wind up in an auto-enrollment situation across your entire business.

16:11But you might want to for certain parts of your people. Why is that? Could you expand on that? Well, what we've not talked about, I suppose, is the difference in the tax treatment, right? So as matters stand, like with a private pension, when you put money into it, say you put 100 euros into your private pension, if you're a top rate taxpayer, you'll receive tax relief at your top rate of tax, which is 40%. So your net cost is 60 euro, okay? If you're a standard rate taxpayer, you put€100 into your pension, you will receive standard rate tax relief, so it'll cost you€80. So it's a tax relief system.

16:53The auto-enrolment works quite differently. So it does not offer tax relief on the 1.5 % that you'll be contributing. Instead, there's a state top-up. And the state top-up is 0.5%. So if you think about it, 0.5 % as a percentage of that 1.5, if you like, added together. So 2 % has gone in, including your worker contribution plus the 0.5%. It equates to an effective tax relief of 25%. 0.5 % of 2%. Sorry for all the numbers. Sorry. But I guess the key point is, just to take away, is 25 % effective tax relief is better than the standard rate of relief of 20 % that you'd get. But it's materially worse than the 40 % that you'd get in a private pension.

17:47So effectively, if you are a top-rate taxpayer who just got auto-enrolled, you're getting a much worse tax treatment than you would be if you had a private pension. and so i guess this should be a bit of a wake-up call for someone who is all enrolled on a high wage but there would be fewer of those people around because if you are on a higher wage you're more than likely to be involved in a private pension of some kind anyways whether it be through your employer or just through a personal one is that correct well i mean we talked about the 800 000 people earlier mike and uh you know it's it's quite easy in ireland to wind up paying top rate tax you know compared to say the uk like the threshold at which you you start paying top top rate taxes is a lot lower so uh i guess we don't know but there's out of that 800 i'm willing to believe there's a significant amount of people who uh are paying top top rate tax probably like you said just didn't get to grips with their pension haven't haven't been thinking about it have wound up auto enrolled and are leaving a substantial amount of tax dollars on the table as matters stand.

18:54Now that's all something that can be fixed, right? So you can opt out of auto-enrollment after six months, so come the summer. But at that point then, you're back to these payroll tests, which look back over a period, three-month period, to see have you been paying into a private pension? And if you have, then you will not be re-auto-enrolled. So there are ways of opting out. And like you said, because pensions are on the agenda a little bit. Maybe people will say, well, gosh, well, I'm paying into a pension now anyway. How could I optimize that further? How could I get better investment choice?

19:30How could I get better advice along the way? How could I structure it better? What should I be paying in? Can I pay more? All that kind of stuff, you know, and that's a great conversation to start having. Brilliant. So I guess basically this should be, we're going to clip this. This is a PSA. If you are in the top rate of tax in Ireland and you are in this auto enrollment program, you shouldn't be. and you should within six months that should be your wake-up call set your alarm and set up your private pension from that because you're leaving money on the table you're leaving basically 15 15 euro out of every 100 on the table right now and uh and yeah and and it's what you said it's it's this um i keep i so funny recently in this podcast i get clued in on one word and i keep saying the same thing but it's another wake-up call of now is the time to start retirement planning and the importance of a private pension and i guess that's the goal of this system would that be fair because when auto enrollment came out obviously it's great to start pensions for people who haven't don't have them but also what's it's bringing in as well as a new thinking in terms of retirement planning and bringing to the front of mind especially for people who are on good wages now who fall into this who fall into this they shouldn't be on it and should go on to a private pension within once summer comes around oh totally yeah i i think it's very easy for people in my game to sort of um knock what the government's trying to do here you know like but it is a real attempt to get to grips with a problem that the the market has not solved you know so it is a strong solution for a lot of people but that's not to say it's right for everyone you know and one of the things they've deliberately done which also makes a lot of sense is made it pretty simple right so So, you know, we might talk about fund choice a bit, Mike, but like, I mean, it's deliberately, deliberately very simple.

21:19And that's a good thing. But equally, if you're serious about, you know, driving growth in your pension and, you know, want to actually play a role in managing what's going to be one of your biggest assets, you know, in your financial life, then this isn't really the place for you. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just about figuring out what's the right situation, what's the right solution for your situation, you know. So let's talk about that. Where is the money gone? Well, so I mentioned earlier that they've appointed three large asset managers, Irish Life Investment Management, Mundy and BlackRock.

21:56And each of those kind of gets a pool of the money to manage. And then each of those feed into one kind of fund choice, if you like, or a central fund choice at different levels. So there's a kind of low risk, a middle risk, and a high risk, effectively. And as you can imagine, they pretty much hold higher proportions of equities as you go up that risk scale. But they all appear to be multi-asset funds. One of the weaknesses, you cannot find a fact sheet for any of these funds yet, I don't believe. they've just been formed very recently but they're basically institutional they've basically formed new share classes of institutional funds that each of these managers run so I don't think they're going to be new strategies or anything and then lastly in addition to that low, medium, high choice there's a default which is a kind of lifestyling fund which tapers down your risk as you approach the point of drawdown so fairly conventional choices but I guess you know my future fund which is what this auto enrolment exercise has been branded as has nothing to say about I don't know the risks around you know US dollar exposure or the mega cap technology company valuations or should you hold gold and silver or these kinds of questions you know you'll be a million miles from that if your money is in my future fund yeah yeah this is fair enough like as in you're gonna have to do it the most basic way possible in a sense because there's an awful lot of uneducated people and and the beauty of this is people have the choice not to educate themselves if they so choose yeah do you know what i mean it's the auto enrollment auto enrollment it's doing it for you it's in the name exactly there's no point in forming an auto and asking people a bunch of questions right exactly uh okay let's get into some practicality So there's a list of questions here.

24:02Go run through them fast. What should you do if you're an employer listening to this? So by now, if you're an employer listening to this, you will want to have registered on myfuturefund.ie. It doesn't take long. And effectively, they will use data that you submit to revenue through your monthly payroll to determine whether the people you employ. well to determine firstly if you require to register right so if you know employees in a company if it's subsidiary that maybe just has self-employed directors that kind of thing then you don't need to register um or and if you do if you are registered then they will look into revenue to take the um the data they need in order to figure out what you're due to to pay into this and a direct debit will be set up and you'll chip in each month okay uh what do you do if you're self-employed?

25:00Well, if you're self-employed, you almost certainly will not be auto-enrolled. So self-employed people are kind of not affected by this. So it's driven by your PRSI class. So if you're self-employed, that'll be class S for self, and you will not be auto-enrolled. So they're one of the groups that are excluded, and I suppose what you should, you know, it's like see above right like use this as a wake-up call to to think about your own situation and and how reliable that state pension might be when you need it okay if you're an employee and your employer hasn't mentioned anything about auto enrollment yet what should you do uh well i mean like this is a mandatory scheme right so i i would expect that the state will be relatively kind of, it's carrot rather than stick at the moment, you know, but effectively, you know, it is not, there is no entitlement to opt out of this, right?

26:02So from an employer's perspective, you were bound to operate it. And what's more, regulations were introduced very late in the day on Christmas Eve, in fact, requiring that, you know, it is also not legitimate to force an employee to pay into a private scheme. So the government got worried that employers were setting up schemes where you dump 10 bucks a week into a pension to frustrate the purpose of this. So that has all been ruled out of order. And your employer has a clear duty to do this. So that's easy to say, right? So in a small business or whatever, there can be unusual dynamics. But like I would have thought, you know, in the first instance, it's a conversation with your employer and it's not going to be too long before that, you know, the employer will be the one in hot water rather than you if they don't act on that.

27:00yeah yeah okay so if you are an employee now and you are kind of waking up to all of this obviously to your wake-up call uh as we mentioned for the sixth time this episode should how do you decide between auto enrollment and sticking with auto enrollment or starting your own private pension um well there's there's a few decision criteria i would say right so So one of the limitations of auto enrolment is these numbers, this 1.5 % that you can put in, right, and the effect of 25 % tax relief. So what I would say is if you are serious about building pension assets, this comes in at a very relatively small level.

27:48It's not going to solve any kind of serious aims you have if you're trying to get out early or aims in retirement that you want to travel the world, all that kind of thing. It's not designed to do that. So the need to fund privately for pensions hasn't really gone away. I'd say come talk to Money Cube or some of our competitors. So those are the conversations we've been having for many years. use this as a reason to kind of stand back from your retirement situation and look at what's really going to pay for your lifestyle in retirement. And consider what's important to you. So there's a question of how much you put in.

28:29There's also how much control you want, how much control over costs, over investment choices, over when you can trigger your pension. so you're not going to have control over that within auto-enrollment and those kinds of benefits. And they've got to be weighed up alongside each other. So both systems have strengths, and it's just figuring out to what extent you want to participate in either or both of them and what's right for your situation. Excuse my ignorance now with this question, but is there a possibility where an employee down the line could stick with auto-enrollment but also open up their own private pension?

29:09say if they want to start a personal pension but don't get the employee matching and don't want to give that up. Because, you know, in year 10, 6 % employee matching and 2 % state matching is nothing to be sniffed at. Yeah, for sure. I guess a couple of comments on that. So fundamentally, yes, there's no reason you can't do that. But I think the regulations will mean that if you are not in auto-enrollment, like your employer will probably have to provide some sort of occupational scheme that's equivalent to that anyway right so that's six percent is probably coming to you um but yeah like you know if you're say you're in your in your 40s in ireland you could be you could be claiming tax relief on 25 of your of your income going into a pension right that could be very valuable so why wouldn't you do that as well as picking up the the six percent you know so one of the nuances of auto enrollment is that it's not actually a pension so it's a retirement saving scheme okay and that's that's why it doesn't offer tax relief for example so it's not it's not pensionable uh you know kind of in the in the way that we talk about private pensions um it's it's a retirement scheme okay and so so that's it's kind of what you're saying earlier that's how you should perceive the state matching percentage rather than the taxpayer okay okay okay so that's fair i mean there are other clues there mike as well like interesting isn't it that it's being run by the department of social protection which is the

30:40Ralph Benson:outfit that runs the state pension you know yeah it's think of it in that kind of context rather than as a competitor to what you could be doing privately to max out your tax relief use one of the few available tax shelters left in ireland for investment growth and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah like as in what's your general consensus amongst the industry for the introduction of auto enrollment do you feel like this should be good for as a pension provider should this be good for business eventually or is there a fear of it taking away um i'm sure plenty of people are worried about that right and it will will change the business if you think about it like you know there's an 800 ,000 potential pool of new pension getters that might just be like, I'm okay with this, you know?

31:32Yeah. Yeah. But that's great. You know, like, and I tend to think that, you know, the businesses that prosper will be the ones that kind of can adapt to the change and fit in, in the new environment, you know? So like one thing I don't particularly, you know, as a, you know, as a, just a participant in our society, as opposed to someone running a business, which is kind of intimately involved in all of this stuff. But like, you know, we have just added one more layer of complexity to our pension system. I'm sure that's going to keep lots of people busy for a good amount of time to come. So they'll be OK.

32:05Don't worry too much about them. No one's ever too worried about the finances. Well, spare a thought, you know, but no, joking aside, I think, you know, it would have helped if some of the complexity had been taken away rather than another layer added on but that's doesn't seem to be how things operate in in the irish pension pensions landscape yeah it's it's a pity because in general i think the irish investing landscape as a whole is such a a mess for lack of a better word you know what i mean like the tax system in place the lack of freedom given to investors, the restrictiveness on it all.

32:48Like even just we talk ad nauseum in here about the state of, you know, the exit tax on ETFs and deemed disposal. And even, you know, the 33 % capital gains tax doesn't seem too bad compared to the state of the exit tax, which is now down to 38, 39. Yeah. What does the future look like for an Irish investor in 10, 20 years? That system has to improve. We're so far behind everywhere else. Yeah, I mean, we've been reflecting on it. We're just kind of 10 years in business at the back end of last year, you know, so it's probably just a point to reflect on how things have changed in that time. But I think quite a lot has evolved for the good over that period, you know.

33:32I would certainly say the accessibility of investments has dramatically changed, you know. The culture of using the banks, which were often a terrible solution for people for their pensions and their mortgage protection and everything else they sold alongside. People know that they will do better by looking elsewhere. I would say on exit tax, there is a roadmap of sorts to improve that.

34:03And that has begun. I think... Will it be similar to the auto-enrolment 20 years down the line will be? Yeah, so you'll be drawing down your pension just when there's a perfect non-pension investment environment. It'll be perfect. But, you know, but like other countries have deemed disposal type regimes as well. Like Germany have something akin to that. So where, you know, the taxpayer takes a gain along the way and obviously it reduces your compounding and so on. So, look, I think the investment culture has come forward leaps and bounds over the last decade in Ireland, helped by people like yourselves and elsewhere.

34:46And that's only to the good. And I think what it will do is, you know, probably 10 years ago, if you started, put up your hand and talked about exit tax, you know, people thought you were weird anyway and you should just buy a property like everybody else. Whereas there's now a material constituency of people who have market-based investments and know it is out of whack. And, you know, the government, it's a bit like the introduction of auto-enrolment without shoving huge costs on in a big bang. they are trying to adjust that and get it to be a little more in line with global norms without kind of affecting the tax base unduly.

35:33Yeah, I always go back. This is my kind of depressing fun fact when we talk about how far behind Ireland tax regulation is compared to, well, the rest of the world. But even like, as you said, it's a community of investors that have developed over the last 10 years. but the 1 ,270 euro capital gains tax exemption. Yeah, you recognize that number. So this was the old conversion rate from the punt to the euro. So that's how long that's been there, and that's how long that's been ignored. So put that into context, and it kind of is a glaring omission of a country. And in fairness, and we talked about this a lot as well, wealth in Ireland is quite recent.

36:18Do you know what I mean? This disposable income to invest in stocks and shares. And we have a bad history of stocks and shares as well, where there was Aircom, where there was the banks, you know, both kind of issues from the state too. We won't get into that or it's in a whole nother podcast. But this new generation of investors wasn't there for my parent generation at all. You know, it would be very rare to invest in stocks and shares there. And a lot of them, for good reason, they've been burnt. Yeah. No, we've got a bit of history to work through, right? So that's definitely a part of it. But I think, you know, I'd say our relationship with the banks has evolved a lot in the last 10 years.