Joining the Fund

Have you just joined Unilever UK or are you thinking of joining?

Pension benefits at Unilever

Working for Unilever gives you valuable benefits such as access to a pension and protection for you and your family while you’re working.

You pay for some of these benefits with your Benefits Envelope. This is money you get on top of your pay that’s worth 25% of your pensionable earnings (your basic pay and, for some people, other allowances).

You can buy other benefits with your pay.

The Benefits Envelope is exclusive to Unilever

By law, companies can pay as little as 3% into pension. At Unilever, your Benefits Envelope is worth 25% of your pensionable earnings on top of your pay. And you can choose how you spend it.

Why you should save into a pension

There are several reasons why saving into a pension is a good idea:

When you join Unilever in the UK

The day you start working for Unilever in the UK you’re automatically enrolled into the Retirement Savings Plan.

The money that you save into the Retirement Savings Plan comes from your Benefits Envelope, not your pay.

When we enrol you into the Retirement Savings Plan you will:

  • Start saving 15% of your pensionable earnings to the Retirement Savings Plan
  • Get the rest as taxable pay

You’ll have 2 weeks to decide if you want to make any changes

You will get an email to your Unilever email account within 4-5 weeks of joining Unilever UK. This email will tell you how you can make changes to your benefit choices. Once you’ve got this email you’ll need to decide:

You will have 2 weeks to make your choices.

If you do not make any changes you will continue to save 15% into the Retirement Savings Plan and get the rest of your Benefits Envelope as extra taxable pay.

Once a year you will get a chance to review these choices and make changes. This time is known as Annual Renewal. Your new choices start from 1 October that year.

You can make changes to your pension at any time.

Making your benefit choices

To help you make your benefit choices you will get access to the Unilever Benefit Choices website where you can:

Check your choices

See what choices you have and what happens if you do nothing

Use the modeller

Compare how your different choices might affect your pension and take-home pay

Get help to choose

Watch a video of a webinar that explains your choices and what you need to think about

Tell Unilever

Submit your choices at My Reward within 2 weeks of getting your email from Reward

To use the Unilever Benefit Choices website you need to sign in through your Unilever account. You will not be able to access the website until you get your email from UKReward.Benefits@unilever.com

Unilever Benefit Choices website

If you’ve forgotten your password, you can reset it at mypassword.unilever.com

If you don’t know your email address or password, ask your line manager to log an IT request to reset your password.

Opting out of saving for pension

You can stop saving into the Retirement Savings Plan. This is called opting out.

If you opt out then you will get all of your Benefits Envelope as extra taxable pay. You’ll pay tax and National Insurance on this money, and possibly other deductions (such as student loan repayments).

You cannot opt out until you have been enrolled in the Retirement Savings Plan. This happens on the first day that you begin working for Unilever.

If you want to opt out straight away

Once you have started working for Unilever you can opt out straight away.

To opt out you need to complete an opt-out form.

If you do not opt out within 30 days of joining Unilever, the money that you saved into the Retirement Savings Plan from your Benefits Envelope will be invested. You will not be able to get this money as extra taxable pay. You can use this money for a retirement income in the future.

If you want to opt out later on

You can opt out during Annual Renewal.

You can also opt-out at any other time by completing an opt-out form.

We might re-enrol you in the future

If you opt out of the Retirement Savings Plan, the law says we have to re-enrol you every 3 years. So we’ll re-enrol you from time to time. Depending on when you opt out this may be sooner than 3 years. When this happens you can opt out again if you want to.

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