Additional Voluntary Contributions

Start helping your employees build their savings with Additional Voluntary Contributions (“AVC’s), the ‘DEWS Booster’.

Employees have the opportunity to request to make AVC’s via salary deduction to help them save towards and meet their future financial goals. To facilitate this, as an employer, you would need to put a voluntary contribution process in place.

Voluntary contributions – what you need to do

1. Use/tailor our template AVC form to capture your employee requests
2. Communicate with employees on the process for logging requests with your HR or Payroll team.
3. Configure a process to deduct the specified AVC amount from your employees’ salaries. This would generally involve Finance and HR.
4. Include the AVC information in your monthly upload file in the column ‘EmployeeContributionAmount’
5. Transfer the AVC amount(s), together with your employer mandatory contribution amount(s), to the Trustee’s bank account
6. Once the AVC’s have been transferred, employees can view their contributions and manage their investments through their online accounts’

Transferring End of Service Benefit (EOSB)

Transfer with employee consent

You can get written consent from your employee and transfer an agreed amount, that is no less than the entitlement calculated by reference to a termination payment under DIFC Employment Law, into the DEWS Plan. In doing so, you are no longer liable for the payment of the accrued EOSB to the employee when employment is terminated, irrespective of any future salary increases and/or length of service. In addition, the employee accepts the ongoing investment risk. Click here for a template of the consent form .

Transfer without employee consent

You can also choose to transfer the accumulated benefit without employee consent. This will be held in the plan, as a pooled fund, under the employer’s name and you can decide how the amount is to be invested. You will still be liable for settling each employee’s accrued EOSB entitlement when they leave service and you can take withdrawals from the fund to achieve this.

How we can support you

While helping you attract and retain talent within your workplace, DEWS will also help your employees to be Ready For Life by taking control of their financial futures. The ability to make DEWS booster (additional voluntary) contributions and to transfer their accrued end of service gratuity will help them do this easily. Our team of experienced relationship managers are on hand to help you with all aspects of employee engagement and education, including:

• Virtual presentations to discuss DEWS and the benefits of saving for the future
• Issuing tailored communications and following up with engagement statistics
• Support with designing internal AVC/EOSG policies
• Shared industry insights and best practice

To find out more please contact dews.support@zurich.com and one of our team will be in touch.