The pay now feature reduces the time between when you deduct contributions from your employees’ salary and when we invest the money into the Smart Pension Master Trust.

This means that if you miss the deadline of the 5th of the month to upload files, you don’t need to wait a month before your contributions are collected - you can pay at any point in the month.

If you are late in paying your contributions, we’d recommend that you use the pay now feature to make late payments immediately, to comply with instructions from The Pensions Regulator. This will reduce the chance of them taking regulatory action against you.

Please remember, we still need to receive the payment of your contributions by the 22nd of the following month after you made deductions from your employees’ salaries.

You can find and use the pay now feature by following these three steps:

If you don’t use the pay now method, you can still upload your files by the 5th of each month and we will collect your contributions on the 7th of each month.

We cannot collect your contributions if you do not upload a contribution file. You still need to upload contribution files if you use the pay now feature.

If you do not upload your contribution files, this could cause your contributions to be paid late. As a result, we may need to report you to The Pensions Regulator who could take regulatory action against you.

You can find answers to frequently asked questions about our pay now feature by reading our help article.