Hi Jo

For private sector employers, the 5% employer contribution seems fairly average for most employees. Big private sector companies though tend to offer their most senior staff access to executive etc pension schemes with considerably higher employer contributions. There are complex HMRC restrictions on the maximum level of employee pension provision, which I’m not at all familiar with in detail and I have no current experience of executive pension schemes but would have thought that the cost of employer contributions to these very variable indeed- ranging say from 10% of pay to 50% or more. Given the brief shelf-life of many large private sector company very senior directors, particularly-generous pension accrual rates are perhaps not too unreasonable?

I would agree practice varies widely

Unless we are talking of the very top of the Footsie 100 tree then I would say that current practice for most other organisations is paying somewhere in the region 10-20% for Execs/Senior Managers and mostly towards lower end of that scale

Hi Jo
You may want to contact your pensions provider to see if they are able to give you a statistical analysis of the practices of their client base......