Practice Area:	Finance
Client:	EC DG for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (FISMA)
Published:	December, 2021
Tagged:	finance pensions quantitative analysis

Automatic enrolment (also referred to as auto-enrolment) is a mechanism that encourages pension saving by enrolling individuals into a pension scheme unless they actively choose to opt-out. This study identifies and evaluates 32 best practices for the design of auto-enrolment pension schemes, informed by an in-depth qualitative and quantitative assessment of pension schemes in selected EU and non-EU countries and consultations with pension experts and stakeholders. The best practices cover the entire saver’s journey, including the initial decision to save through a pension, fund choice, growing pension entitlements and post-retirement choices. In addition, best practices are presented on the implementation of an auto-enrolment pension scheme. Finally, a scoreboard is presented that assesses each best practice against key evaluation criteria, including its relative importance in the functioning of an auto-enrolment pension scheme and its impact on performance measures, namely participation, savings and investment returns.