The Pensions Ombudsman (TPO) has upheld a complaint against Prasinus Limited and directed it to pay £1,000 for the “serious distress and inconvenience” caused.

The complainant, identified in the ruling as Mr O, alleged that Prasinus had failed to pay contributions into his Nest scheme despite deducting £1,289.99 worth of contributions from his pay.

Mr O explained that he was enrolled into the Nest scheme in February 2021 and complained in April 2021 to Prasinus that his contributions had not been paid into the scheme.

In December 2021, Prasinus emailed Mr O and said it had paused payments to Nest during a period of turbulence to maximise money for wages and that it had made an arrangement with Nest to pay an initial payment soon to clear the balance within the next three to six months.

Mr O left his employment with Prasinus in December 2021 and was informed in April 2022 by Prasinus that it was clearing the balance of the outstanding contributions over the rest of the year.

In April 2022, Mr O made an application to TPO. This was first considered by a caseworker who stated that, whilst TPO’s normal approach was to seek agreement from all parties on the facts of the complaint, since Prasinus had not responded fully to any of TPO’s communications, he had to base his opinion solely on the information provided by Mr O.

The caseworker said that he had no reason to doubt the information provided by Mr O and concluded that Mr O had “suffered serious distress and inconvenience” due to Prasinus’s maladministration.

As a result, the caseworker announced that it ruled in favour of Mr O but, after Prasinus did not respond to the caseworker’s opinion, the complaint was passed to the ombudsman.

The ombudsman concluded that the available evidence supported the view that employee contributions were deducted but held back by Prasinus and not paid into the scheme, stating that this failure amounted to “unjust enrichment” that had caused Mr O to suffer a financial loss.

To put matters right, TPO directed Prasinus to pay £1,000 to Mr O for the serious distress and inconvenience he has experienced, as well as produce a schedule showing the employee contributions deducted from Mr O’s pay, and forward the schedule to Mr O.

Prasinus was also directed to provide Mr O with any reasonable additional information in order for him to be able to check the details in the schedule, and after receiving confirmation from Mr O that he agrees with the information on the schedule, pay the missing contributions to the scheme.

TPO also ordered Prasinus to establish with the scheme whether the late payment of contributions meant that fewer units were purchased in Mr O’s account than he would otherwise have secured and to pay the cost of purchasing any additional units required to make up the shortfall.

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