How the IMI Retirement Savings Plan works

The IMI Retirement Savings Plan (the Plan) is part of the Mercer Master Trust and administered by Scottish Widows. The pension plan is a defined contribution scheme, which means that you and IMI pay a fixed amount each month into your pension. The money is invested until you’re ready to take it when you retire. The amount your pension is worth depends on how much you contribute and investment performance.

The quickest way to find out information about the Plan is to visit Scottish Widows, Your Workplace Savings, as it contains lots of information about the Plan, pension education and retirement planning tools.

How much do I contribute?

You can choose how much you want to pay into your pension, but by law, this has to be a minimum of 5% of your pensionable salary. To help you get more in your pension pot, IMI will match your contribution up to 8% . If you take the full match and pay 8% , this means, overall, you’ll have 16% going into your pot, but you'll only be paying half of that yourself.

You can also choose to pay more into your pension (called Additional Voluntary Contributions, AVCs) as a regular or one-off amount. Just bear in mind that IMI won’t match AVCs. Please liaise with local HR to action this.

You can change your contributions at any time through Optimize. Please note, changes to contributions are effective in payroll the month following the change request.

How tax relief works

The Government wants everyone to pay into a pension as it knows the State Pension is unlikely to be enough for a comfortable retirement. So as a little boost, it gives you tax back at your marginal tax rate on the money you pay in to help your pot grow. If you’re a basic-rate taxpayer, you’ll get 20% tax relief on the money you pay in. So, every £1 that you pay in only costs you 80p.

Joining

You can join the Plan at any time by completing the joining form.