Financial professionals are finding themselves in the unaccustomed and, frankly, bemusing position of dealing with a Government initiative which actually appears to be achieving what it set out to do.

People who are used to coping with the law of unintended consequences, which usually attends legislative manoeuvring in the UK, are looking at the first reports coming in about pension auto-enrolment and seeing take-up rates in excess of 90%.

This is well in excess of the government’s own estimations, which were in the region of 75%, and it would appear that the great mass of people who hitherto have made no pension provision are enthusiastically embracing the concept of compulsion.

Auto-enrolment is in itself a very simple idea designed to dramatically increase the numbers of workers with a personal, as well as a State, pension. All employees are automatically enlisted in a scheme by their employer, with the right to…