Feedback collated during the first 12 months of the Your Island Pension scheme suggest it is working as intended with service users finding it “easy, simple, and affordable”.

Sovereign Trust was selected as the partner to lead on the States-planned secondary pension auto-enrolment scheme.

It went live in January 2024, and Sovereign MD Sean Gillease said he’s delighted to say “that it’s got off to a good start”.

Pictured: Sean Gillease is Managing Director of Sovereign Group.

YIP is a States of Guernsey’s facilitated scheme, developed to ensure that all Guernsey employers have access to “suitable, low-charge pension provision” under new rules meaning all eligible workers must be automatically enrolled on a workplace pension scheme.

“Following our selection to manage the YIP scheme in March 2022, Sovereign had to get straight down to work in planning and preparing for implementation,” Mr Gillease explained.

“Our core objective was to create a scheme that was easy, simple and affordable, and the feedback from YIP clients – both employers and employees – suggests that we have delivered on that.”

Since YIP went live in January last year, the implementation has been phased.

Companies with more than 25 employees were the first required to automatically enrol eligible employees into an approved pension scheme from 1 July 2024, followed by companies with 11 to 25 employees on 1 October and companies with six to 10 employees on 1 January 2025. Smaller companies will follow this year.

“In terms of numbers, we had received more than 350 employer applications to join YIP by the end of 2024, plus a small number of self-employed applicants,” said Mr Gillease.

“We launched 200 employer schemes during 2024 and, with almost a 100 more schemes being launched in January 2025, we expect to bring our total membership up to nearly 4,000 employees.”

Mr Gillease said the feedback received from both employers and employees who are signed up to YIP is a key measure for its success.

“We carried out a survey of employers who joined YIP and the feedback has been very positive. Some 95% of respondents agreed that the application form is easy to understand and complete, and the same agreed that the onboarding process is simple and easy. The responsiveness and engagement of the team is rated more than 4.5 out of 5. Importantly, 95% confirmed that they would recommend YIP to others.

“This is particularly pleasing because a great deal of time and effort was spent to ensure that the employer experience should be as painless as possible and the feedback suggests that, for the most part, we’ve been able to achieve that.”