Now: Pensions has withdrawn from the master trust assurance list of providers for auto-enrolment.

The company said the withdrawal is voluntary while it works to resolve some historic issues with processing contributions for a small percentage of its clients.

The issues are largely due to a change of third party administrator, Now: Pensions said, but it expects them to be resolved soon.

Morten Nilsson, Now: Pensions CEO, said: "We feel that while we work to resolve these historic issues and ensure that every scheme is up to date, it's appropriate to withdraw from the list.

"We are confident that this work will be completed shortly and providing our clients and members the best possible service remains our top priority."

As one of the largest players in the auto-enrolment market, Now: Pensions is in ongoing dialogue with The Pensions Regulator regarding all aspects of its scheme.

It said it has kept the regulator fully updated regarding its issues and accepts that getting some of its schemes up to date has taken longer than it should have done, due to the complexity of some of the cases, the poor-quality data that was sometimes involved, and the systems used.

Nilsson said the company should have told clients sooner about the problem.

"We should have been more proactive in our communications with affected clients and members regarding these issues and apologise wholeheartedly to those we have let down.

"In this instance, we have fallen short of the standard of service we aim to provide," he said.

To prevent a re-occurrence of the issues, Now: Pensions said it has invested, and continues to invest, in new systems, people and processes.

Over the past two years, it has been building a large internal operation out of its office in Nottingham and its own auto-enrolment site to upload payroll files called the Now: Pensions Gateway, which was launched for new clients at the end of last year.

First published 27.07.2017

Lindsay.sharman@hotmail.com