Opt-out payroll saving: Supporting employees to save

In the UK, auto enrolment has made a huge difference to participation rates for workplace pension saving, helping millions of people to get started. Our opt-out payroll saving trials are exploring whether a similar opt-out joining mechanism could help people to get started with emergency saving. The aim of this approach is to increase participation among people who want to save through payroll but who find it difficult to start, whilst also preserving the choice for those who don’t want to or can’t save.

The research builds on results from our sidecar savings pilots which found that, despite high levels of support for workplace emergency amongst employers and employees, employee sign-up levels were low. Our research shows that inertia – people’s tendency to keep doing what they’re already doing – is a strong barrier to participation. At one employer for example, 98% of people who say they think the savings tool will help them have not yet signed up. The opt-out mechanism changes this: it me means that employees automatically start saving into their own accessible savings account through payroll contributions unless they choose not to. If they want to start saving, they don’t need to do anything, everything is done for them. Only people who don’t want to save have to take action.

The results are striking. Across our research, an opt out approach led to dramatically higher participation, with far more employees beginning to save when the default was to start saving. Early balances also built quickly: new savers accumulated an average of £125 within four months, and users of the benefits app based version reached £96 on average over the same period. The research shows that once people are enrolled, they tend to keep going, saving persistently over time and maintaining active accounts. The findings demonstrate that opt out payroll saving can be a powerful and inclusive way to help people who want to save overcome inertia and start building a financial buffer.

About the project

Between 2021 and 2023, we ran two trials of opt-out payroll saving approaches across three employers:

  • One with UK employer SUEZ recycling and recovery UK and their credit union Transave focusing on new employees; and another with two large UK employers, Bupa Care Services and The Co-op, and their financial wellbeing benefit-app provider Stream (formerly,  Wagestream).
  • In 2026, we extended the pilot with SUEZ recycling and recovery UK to include other employees.

The trials were supported by The BlackRock Foundation and the Money and Pensions Service (MaPs). The research was led by Nest Insight together with academics Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, Jay Garg and David Laibson from Harvard University, and James Choi from Yale University.

Research objectives

  • To understand if an opt-out payroll saving approach can improve financial resilience and wellbeing through greater levels of payroll saving, compared to an opt-in approach.
  • To compare the opt-out payroll saving approach to alternatives such as active choice.
  • To explore the different implementation approaches to offering opt-out payroll saving, and identify the benefits and barriers to these different approaches.

Research methodology

The research brought together different methodologies to address the research questions comprehensively including:

  • Analysis of administrative data – account data collected by Transave and Stream allowed us to look at account usage and saving behaviours including deposits, balances and withdrawals over time. The SUEZ/Transave research used a pre/post design and the Bupa/Co-Op/Stream was a randomised controlled trial.
  • Analysis of employee data – employee data from SUEZ allowed us to look at demographic differences in saving behaviours as well as other saving behaviour like pension participation.
  • Regular employee and comparison group surveys – measuring self-reported financial wellbeing and responses to the different opt-out payroll saving propositions.
  • Qualitative research with employees – research interviews allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of questions like why the opt-out model is useful to people, how it should be communicated and it’s impact on financial wellbeing.
  • Qualitative research with employers and other stakeholders – exploring implementation considerations and questions like why employers might choose to offer or not offer opt-out payroll saving.

Key findings

The research found that an opt-out mechanism is an effective, popular and inclusive way to support employees to save. Employees who remain enrolled frequently built a new savings habit with some using their savings to manage within month expenditure and others building balances for emergencies or saving goals.

  • Opt-out payroll saving supports many more people to save: Employers who have implemented an opt-out approach to payroll saving have seen employee participation rates jump by around 50 percentage points, compared to opt-in approaches. In our trials, up to 7 in 10 workers save when opt-out approaches are used.
  • Opt-out payroll savers are active savers: People who start saving through an opt-out approach build meaningful savings buffers over time. They also actively use their accounts by withdrawing money when they need it.
  • Employees like opt-out payroll saving: Around 9 in 10 of employees surveyed say they like scheme, whether or not they themselves choose to save.
  • People’s other financial behaviours aren’t negatively impacted: The data from our trials suggests there is no crowding out of pension saving as a result of introducing opt-out payroll saving directed to instant-access savings pots.
  • Opt-out payroll saving supports employee financial wellbeing over time: People use their workplace savings accounts in different ways. Knowing that they’re saving gives people greater peace of mind and confidence.
  • Opt-out models support more people to save than others that require an active choice: In an ‘active choice’ scenario, people are prompted to answer: ‘do you want to save?’: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Active choice is simpler to implement than opt-out payroll saving under the current regulatory framework, and has shown promise in the pensions context. However, in our research, it only increases participation rates by a few percentage points compared to opt-in models. When the design is optimised, it increased participation by 22 percentage points but this is still considerably lower than the opt-out model.

Press releases, blogs, videos and event recordings

© Copyright Nest 2026