Over half, 56 per cent, of accountants have said they are telling all smalls businesses to choose the government’s NEST scheme, as a default, without researching whether this would be the best possible option for them, a report by employee benefits adviser Helm Godfrey has found.

In its new report Plugging the Advice Gap: how can accountants help SMEs to auto-enrol?, Helm Godfrey recorded that ahead of small businesses’ (which make up more than 99.9 per cent of the UK’s private sector) approaching auto-enrolment dates, 43 per cent of accountants admitted to an auto-enrolment knowledge gap being their own biggest challenge when it came to advising businesses.

Being the primary source of advice for smaller businesses set to adopt the pension reforms, accountants have been urged to prepare for an uplift in enquiries in the coming year.

The report also found that 41 per cent of accountants have difficulty navigating the detail of auto-enrolment and 32 per cent had concerns about finding the right advice for clients.

Forty two per cent of accountants have said that they recommend that clients speak to a specialist adviser about auto-enrolment instead. The remaining 58 per cent, however, still do not.

Helm Godfrey head of auto enrolment Steve Wood, said: “When you consider that the majority of practice-based accountants we interviewed told us that fewer than 25% of their clients have begun the auto enrolment process, there’s going to be a lot of small businesses coming to accountants for advice in the coming year, but many of them may not be equipped with the specialist knowledge required to provide the advice their clients need.

“The complexity and scale of the task means that many small employers are simply going - or being pushed - to NEST or one of the other ‘Master Trust’ pension schemes that have been set up to meet the demand for auto-enrolment schemes; often without any consideration for their (or their employees’) particular needs. One size does not fit all and offering advice on selection of the most appropriate scheme can be an invaluable benefit that accountants can offer to their client.

“Accountants may think supposedly ‘low cost’ pension schemes will always be best for their clients, but this is not true. Some low-cost schemes can be time-consuming and/or costly to administer and may not be best value for the employees, depending on the nature and make-up of the work force,” Wood concluded.

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