Salary Exchange can help your business and your employees make the most of your employee benefits schemes while cutting National Insurance costs for both.
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Why Use Salary Exchange?
Salary Exchange (also known as Salary Sacrifice) is a simple, effective way to help your employees save more, and cut National Insurance costs for your business at the same time.
With employer NIC rates rising, there’s never been a better time to review your employee benefits and unlock valuable savings.
Salary Exchange Potential Savings
What You Need to Know About Salary Exchange
Salary Exchange (also known as Salary Sacrifice) is a smart way for businesses and employees to make their pension contributions more tax-efficient. Instead of deducting pension contributions from your employees’ salary after tax, you agree to reduce their gross salary and make the contributions on their behalf.
Why does this matter? With this structure, both the employer and the employee pay less in National Insurance Contributions (NICs). It’s a win-win. Your people save more for the future, and your business cuts costs.
Following recent Budget changes, where employer NICs have increased, Salary Exchange is becoming an even more valuable strategy. By reviewing your current approach, you could unlock significant savings across your workforce, savings that can be reinvested back into your business or employee benefits.
See how much you could save.
Contact us for your free 1-hour online Salary Exchange consultation today.
FAQs
How has the recent budget made Salary Exchange more relevant?
Employer NICs will rise, meaning businesses face increased employment costs. Salary Exchange offers a way to help offset these increases while benefiting employees too.
When will the new changes take place?
The changes have already taken place from April 2025.
How can our business sign up?
Getting started is simple. Just fill out the short enquiry form on this page, and one of our Employee Benefits specialists will be in touch to guide you through the next steps. We’ll review your existing pension scheme, assess your suitability for Salary Exchange, and walk you through implementation, from drafting employee communications to setting up the process correctly and compliantly.
Will our company be eligible for the schemes?
Most UK businesses with a qualifying workplace pension scheme and employees who earn above the National Minimum or Living Wage after exchange are eligible to implement Salary Exchange. We’ll assess your current setup and ensure it meets the legal and payroll requirements. Even smaller businesses can benefit. Our team will walk you through the eligibility checks to confirm it’s the right fit for your company and your employees.
How long do the schemes take to set up?
Once we’ve reviewed your current pension arrangements and confirmed eligibility, Salary Exchange can usually be implemented within 4 to 6 weeks. This includes designing the scheme, updating payroll processes, drafting employee communications, and supporting you with any necessary amendments to employment contracts. Our team manages the process from start to finish to keep things simple and on track.
What our clients say
Our team
Meet our dedicated Employee Benefits team, who bring many years of experience to help meet the needs of your employees.
Joseph Warne has more than 17 years’ experience in pensions and employee benefits starting at KPMG before moving to PwC and finally Mercer before taking up his position at Pareto Financial Planning.Joseph specialises in corporate pensions and employee benefits, partnering with companies to design and manage sustainable pension and employee benefit strategies. He supports small SMEs up to large multinationals and once helped a company based in the North West save over £300,000 pa by implementing pension salary exchange.Outside of work he likes spending time with his family as well as both playing and watching most sports.
Evette has a BA Honours European Studies with Spanish from MMU. She has spent the last 10 years in Financial services predominantly managing health trusts, Pension administration and employee benefits administration – group risk and PMI. She joined Pareto in 2023 as an Employee Benefits AdministratorIn her spare time she does Crossfit & Olympic Lifting, spending time with her dogs & Family, and going on country walks & paddle boarding.
Nathan began his career in the Financial Services industry in 2017, and has since worked in banking, wealth management and now the provision of corporate pensions and employee benefits.Nathan joined Pareto in 2024 and relocated to Manchester for his new role. He works alongside the employee benefit team to help support a range of clients, spanning across small SMEs, large multinational firms and everything in between. He specialises in aiding and supporting these firms to design, develop and implement employee benefit strategies.Outside of work, Nathan enjoys playing football, watching sports, and working on his (often broken!) cars.
Stephen brings over 15 years of experience in Healthcare Employee Benefits, with a particular focus on the Corporate and SME Private Medical Insurance market.
As an Employee Benefits Administrator at Pareto, he contributes an encyclopaedic level of knowledge and expertise, ensuring clients receive high-quality support across their schemes.
Outside of work, Stephen enjoys playing and running tabletop roleplaying games, building and painting Warhammer models, going to the cinema, reading, and listening to music, particularly 90s and 00s grunge, metal, and hip hop.
Olivia has spent the past four years working in financial services as a Personal Banker for a high street bank, where she primarily supported clients by assessing their financial needs and providing tailored banking solutions. While she does not currently hold formal financial qualifications, she is committed to her professional development and has plans to build a portfolio of qualifications over the next few years, starting with the GR1 as she has e a passion and aptitude for her own personal and professional development, especially now she is a part of Pareto.
In her role as an Employee Benefits Administrator, Olivia's main purpose is to provide excellent service to our wide range of business clients and administer their policies to ensure they have their group risk and healthcare and wellbeing benefits in place. She manages to build good relationships with all her clients during her time at Pareto and can communicate effectively to ensure best outcome for all involved.
Outside of work, Olivia likes to be involved in charity work especially in relation to Teenage Cancer Trust and The Christie hospital as she have been linked to these charities for a large period of her life. She attends events and fundraisers and help in anyway she can. Her odd hobbies are reading and walks with my two dogs. Olivia has a massive obsession with all genres of music, she lives in her earphones!!
Nimish is a highly experienced professional with over 20 years’ experience across Group Risk, Retail Management, and Customer Service. Throughout his career, he has built a reputation as a hardworking, self-motivated team player who consistently exceeds targets and delivers meaningful improvements through a professional and proactive approach.
He holds a BEng (Hons) and an MSc from the University of Salford, where he completed his postgraduate studies in Engineering. Nimish now works as an Employee Benefits Administrator at Pareto, where he supports the team in delivering efficient, high-quality service to clients. He is always eager to learn, adapt, and contribute towards achieving the company’s goals.
Marc joined Pareto in August 2024. He has spent the last 5 years in financial services predominantly managing and advising on employee benefit design, implementation, communication and review of online platforms.Outside of work Marc is a professional club DJ and also hosts a weekly Saturday night underground dance radio show. He also volunteers at BPM REHAB (a DJ school for young adults learning to DJ as part of their rehabilitation) and also ‘Accessible Festival’ each year (a Glastonbury style festival focused around children with disabilities).
Alan has been advising corporate clients since 1992. Alan seeks to understand the business: its objectives, values and people strategy and advises on how an employee benefits strategy can support these. Advising on the design, implementation, communication and review of effective employee benefits. Alan prides himself on providing a high level of service to his clients and this has resulted in loyal client relationships. Specialities: Pension Auto Enrolment, Scheme Governance, Salary Sacrifice, Group Life Assurance, Group Income Protection, Private Medical Insurance, Health and Wellbeing, Benchmarking, Communication.
Tom has worked within Employee Benefits since 2006, starting as an EB administrator. He later progressed to an Employee Benefits Adviser with Pareto in 2019. The experience gained within the various roles have helped him develop an in-depth knowledge of Pension Auto-Enrolment, Group Life Assurance, Group Income Protection, Private Medical Insurance and Pension Scheme Governance.
Zoe joined Pareto in January 2022 after training to become a teacher, she taught Religious Education. Previously, she worked as a Data Entry Clerk at a fruit and veg wholesaler in Gorton before joining the IO team here. And now just recently joined the Employee Benefits team and is really enjoying it!She enjoyed working in Data Entry and wanting to find something similar- and the papercloud cleansing job seemed to fit that well and she enjoyed doing it.Outside of work Zoe enjoy taking her dog out on walks, doing plenty of reading and spending time with family.
After graduating with a degree in Cultural Studies in 1999 Karen began her career in Employee Benefits at well-known corporate providers, specialising in Private Medical Insurance and Group Risk before moving into personal finance administration working at both small and large IFA practices within Cheshire and progressing to management level.Joining Pareto in January 2023 she supports Operations Director Nicky Aspray with the management of the administration functions within the business. She is responsible for ensuring the business has robust processes and systems in place that deliver positive client outcomes. People matter and Karen is passionate about promoting the values of Pareto to foster a happy working environment for the teams which she believes then goes hand in hand with delivering great client experiences.Outside of work Karen enjoys spending time out and about in the fresh air with her family and two whippets, reading, baking and getting out for a run when she can.