Auto-enrolment questions that are really advice referrals

Auto-enrolment lands on the accountant as an administrative and payroll matter. You help employers meet their duties, you handle the contributions through payroll, and you keep clients compliant with their obligations. That is squarely your territory. But auto-enrolment constantly throws off questions that are not about compliance at all. They are about whether the scheme is any good, whether people are saving enough, and what individuals should be doing with their own pensions, and those are regulated advice.

Because you administer the process, you are the person these questions naturally reach. An employer wonders whether the workplace scheme is the right one. A director asks whether the minimum contributions are enough for them personally. A member asks what they should do with the pot that is building up. Each of these has drifted from the compliance you provide into advice that belongs with a regulated firm.

Listen for the queries that have moved past administration:

• Is the workplace pension scheme we are using actually a good one?
• Are the minimum contributions enough, or should people be paying more?
• As a director, should I be doing something more than the auto-enrolment minimum?
• What should an employee do with the pension pot they are building up?
• How does the workplace scheme fit with someone's other pensions?

These sound like extensions of the auto-enrolment work, but they are requests for a judgement about pension provision. Answering them informally would take you across the regulated line and short-change the person asking.

It is easy to treat these as simply more auto-enrolment questions and to offer a helpful opinion. The trouble is that whether a scheme suits someone, whether contributions are adequate, and what an individual should do with their pension are regulated recommendations. Giving them off the cuff risks straying outside your permissions and leaves the client with a casual view rather than a proper assessment.

Your value is in recognising the shift. You handle the compliance impeccably and then notice when a question has become an advice question. Redirecting it to someone qualified is not passing the buck; it is making sure the client gets an answer they can actually rely on, from a firm that is permitted to give it.

The referral moment is the point where an auto-enrolment query turns personal. You might say: I can keep the scheme running and compliant, but whether the contributions are right for you personally, or whether the scheme suits your circumstances, is a regulated question; I can introduce you to a firm that advises on exactly that.

This keeps you as the introducer. You have handled the administration that is yours to handle and drawn a clean line at the advice. The client is pointed to a vetted, regulated advice firm that can assess their pension provision properly, while you remain the professional who kept them compliant and knew where the rest belonged.

Auto-enrolment gives you two distinct sets of people to listen to. The employer may have questions about the scheme itself and about their own director-level provision, which sits above the minimum. The employees have questions about their individual pots and whether they are saving enough. Both audiences generate advice questions, and both can be introduced to a regulated firm.

This makes auto-enrolment an unusually rich source of referral moments, because you are administering something that touches many people at once. Each personal question that surfaces is a potential introduction, and you are positioned to hear them all.

Through SmartPeer, redirecting these questions is a commission-only arrangement that sits alongside your existing payroll and compliance work. You introduce the client to a regulated advice firm; that firm provides the regulated advice; you receive a share of the fee, typically a 60-70% member share, without advising on pensions yourself.

The discipline to build is to notice when an auto-enrolment question stops being about duties and starts being about whether someone is well provided for. That shift is the referral. Handle the compliance, hear the advice question underneath, and route it to a regulated firm. Done consistently, a routine administrative service becomes a steady stream of introductions.