Workplace pension providers have achieved a “record number” of overall gold awards in Benefits Guru’s workplace pension and auto-enrolment (AE) 2024 ratings.

The ratings are designed to assist advisers and employers in the decision-making process, highlighting which providers perform strongest in different areas of their pension propositions.

Nine providers, including Aviva, Royal London and Standard Life, were awarded ‘overall gold’ awards across 24 product offerings.

Standard Life was the only provider to achieve a ‘clean sweep’ of overall gold awards and gold in all sub-categories across workplace pension and AE ratings.

This year’s ratings introduced additional benchmarking criteria, including 'at retirement member support' and 'understanding scheme & member outcomes'.

The ratings also included measuring member engagement, which saw more diverse scoring among providers, with only five providers achieving a gold rating.

Cushon, Nest and The People’s Partnership asked not to be included in this year’s rating.

Benefits Guru chief commercial officer, Jason Green, commented: “This year’s exceptional scores reflect how providers are constantly developing and improving their offerings to ensure the best outcomes for their members.

“The overall standard is very high, which reflects the number of gold awards this year, but it is important to look at subcategories because of the nuances that define the pensions sector.

“We structure our ratings to not only give an overall score, but also rate the ten underlying categories.

“The industry benchmark is now so high, but the real detail of each provider’s strengths is shown at the individual category level.

“We need to look beyond the overall score and drill into the detail which has a very diverse set of results, showing the different strengths across provider offerings.”

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