Businesses were given advice and information on the biggest changes in the history of corporate pensions at a seminar held by Yorkshire Bank in Birmingham.

The Birmingham-based LEBC Group, a leading firm of employee benefit consultants, was invited to outline Auto-Enrolment which comes into force for some businesses in 2012 at the event at Yorkshire Bank's Financial Solutions Centre (FSC) in Temple Row.

LEBC's Matthew Beaman, who has been advising UK and international companies for the last 17 years, has been involved in many of the consultations regarding the Pensions Bill 2008 and the Pensions Act 2011 which form the new set of rules for employers.

Paul Reeves, managing partner at Yorkshire Bank's FSC in Birmingham, said Matthew was well placed to give advice on the reforms that will impact initially on companies with over 50,000 employees in October next year before progressing to smaller firms between 2013 and 2017.

"LEBC is Yorkshire Bank's partner for corporate and group pension advice and Matthew discussed the legislative changes that will become law next year," he said.

"Companies will have to start providing pensions for their staff and the seminar illustrated the impact of the changes.

"This will have far-reaching implications since it involves all companies who employ one person or more earning at least £7,745 each year because they are going to have to start paying money into a staff pension scheme so employers and employees will have to make contributions.

"There is potentially a lot of administration involved since the staff pension scheme can be a new one, an existing scheme with some modifications or a new national default pension scheme and the paperwork involved was the focus of Matthew's talk.

"He assessed the potential true costs and risks to businesses, whether existing pensions will meet the requirements of a Qualifying Workplace Pension and the steps companies can put in place now to take control.

"The customers that came found it really useful and thought-provoking and went away with more knowledge to look at the subject so there was a great deal to muse over."