**Ifty Nasir: “Share schemes are vital to the UK’s pandemic bounceback.”**
On Wednesday, Rishi Sunak will be unveiling the Autumn budget and businesses across the UK are braced for the details, wondering what changes they can expect to see.
Amongst those businesses is Vestd, the UK’s leading share scheme platform. Vestd has been a key voice in this year’s preparation for one anticipated topic of the Autumn Budget: employee share schemes.
The Gov launched a review into share schemes in March 2021 and Vestd contributed the largest cache of data on the subject in UK history. Vestd’s management also met with senior figures from HMRC and HM Treasury to discuss the success of share schemes to date.
**“I would urge the Government to provide full support”**
Ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, Ifty Nasir, founder and CEO of Vestd stated that he hoped that “The Chancellor has taken on board the overwhelming and holistic endorsement of share schemes that we presented to them back in the spring.”
“Thousands of people use our platform to monitor and manage their share schemes and this gives us a unique window into the benefits experienced by companies up and down the country.”
“In addition to that, we regularly invest in definitive research around the subject and what we reported to the Government was a compilation of feedback from 5000 business owners, leaders and UK employees. The uniformity in what they were saying can’t be ignored.”
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“What we discovered is profound. Over 90% of companies operating a scheme agreed that it has helped with recruitment, employee retention and with business growth and development.”
“It is clear to us that share schemes are an essential element of a thriving economy and deserve full state support.”
**What could happen on Wednesday**
The review into UK share schemes closed in May and it is expected that the Chancellor will devote part of Wednesday’s speech to announce either the expansion of support for share schemes or alternatively, a withdrawal in Government backing.
“Not supporting share schemes would be a grave error” stated Nasir. “It’s clear from the data and from the anecdotal evidence that whenever a company introduces EMI, they see results that outstrip even their most ambitious hopes for what the scheme can do for them.”
“We’ve also collated recommendations from our customers as to what the government should do to improve the scheme. The overriding message is to widen the eligibility criteria so that more companies can participate.”
“During this time of recovery from COVID-19, enhancing the existing scheme could be one of the most powerful things that the Government could do to support small businesses and startups across the UK.”
