MARITIME employers are at risk of crippling fines by falling foul of new UK pensions rules.

Businesses face civil penalties of up to £50,000 ($69,300) and daily penalties of £10,000 for failing to auto enrol eligible employees in a pension scheme from February 1.

Confusion over how the rules apply to seafarers and offshore workers could lead to an increased risk of penalties, Ensign Pension Fund marketing director Jemima FitzMorris has warned.

“Employers may find that already complex auto enrolment rules are made even more difficult to apply to the maritime world, because the criteria stipulates for those ‘working in the UK’, but seafarers and offshore workers don’t sit neatly within this definition,” Ms FitzMorris said.

Maritime employers based outside the UK could find themselves unwittingly facing penalties for non-compliance, including businesses with overseas employees within the UK to which auto enrolment may apply.

The UK rolled out pensions auto enrolment in 2012.

More than 9m employees from over 1m employers have so far been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme, according to The Pensions Regulator.

The scheme is standardised across all UK industry, meaning not all of it is suitable for the maritime industry. One example is the opt-out process in which the opt-out period is one month. As seafarers are often away from home and without reliable internet access for weeks or months at a time, the opt-out period does not allow seafarers a fair opportunity to review their options and take action, should they decide to do so.

“It’s easy to understand why employers may be struggling to understand the rules,” Ms FitzMorris said.

The Department for Work and Pensions will now seek clarity on how auto enrolment can work for seafarers.

The Ensign Retirement Plan with Spinnaker Global and Maritime HR will collect evidence on auto enrolment as it applies to seafarers which will feed directly back to the DWP.

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