NEST
National Employment Savings Trust — a government-backed defined contribution pension scheme established under Pensions Act 2008 to provide a low-cost workplace pension for employers without suitable existing schemes.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) is a workplace pension scheme run by an independent trustee body, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) Corporation. It exists because the Pensions Act 2008 gave the Secretary of State powers to establish a pension scheme that employers could choose to use to meet their automatic enrolment duties, run independently rather than by government itself.
NEST opened to members in 2011 and has since become the largest master trust in the UK, used heavily by employers who did not already have a qualifying workplace pension scheme in place when automatic enrolment duties began to apply to them.
Related terms
Official sources
This explanation is drawn from the official sources below; every substantive statement is verified against them. For advice on a specific matter, see our find help page.