The liability you are already carrying
Live since April. Not a warning, a description.
Since April, if an umbrella company fails to pay the right PAYE to HMRC, the recruitment agency that supplied the worker can be pursued for the shortfall. This is not something coming; it is how your supply chain already works.
The liability is joint and several, which means HMRC can come to your agency for the full amount rather than a share of it, and it can do so without first exhausting its options against the umbrella. There is no statutory defence: having carried out due diligence does not, on its own, remove the exposure.
That has already changed what a PSL is for. It has stopped being a list of providers your consultants like dealing with and become a list your agency is willing to underwrite. Since April, agencies have been cutting the number of umbrellas they work with and asking harder questions of the ones that remain, which is the environment we built for, rather than one we are adapting to.
We are not going to tell you that partnering with us removes the risk, because no umbrella can honestly say that. What we can do is make the checking straightforward: figures published rather than quoted, every deduction itemised, and the certification position stated plainly whether or not it flatters us.
Five questions worth asking every umbrella on your PSL
- What exactly is your margin, in writing? Ours is £18 weekly, £72 four-weekly, £78 monthly, all published here. A provider that will only quote on request is one you cannot compare.
- Can I see a full payslip breakdown for one of your workers? Yes — here is a specimen, and the take-home calculator on this site reproduces it line for line. Every deduction should be itemised. Anything bundled into an unexplained admin line is worth a second question.
- Which accreditations do you actually hold today? Ask for the certificate, not the logo. Ours: SafeRec in progress, FCSA to follow, stated in full below.
- How do you evidence that PAYE has actually reached HMRC? The one that matters most now the liability has moved. Real-time payslip auditing is what SafeRec certification is designed to prove.
- Who is behind the company, and can you get hold of them? A named director, not a support queue. Ours is Rizwan Mahmood, whose background is set out below, along with our insurance cover. During a trial you deal with him directly.
Built for the PSL, not around it
We're a new name. Here's what we put in front of PSL managers instead of a track record.
Open-book margin
You and your contractors see the same weekly breakdown we do. If a number changes, you'll know why before it happens, not after.
Compliance-first from week one
We built RGM Pay around the joint & several liability rules rather than retrofitting after they landed. Every provider on your PSL now has to answer for this; we were designed for it.
Trial before you commit
Run us alongside your current provider with two or three contractors. Judge the payslips, the response times and the paperwork yourself.
How the trial partnership works
Four steps from first call to full PSL. Most agencies reach step three inside a fortnight.
Book a call
Fifteen minutes on your current umbrella setup and where it's costing you visibility.
Trial contractors
We onboard a small group alongside your existing arrangement, with no PSL paperwork yet.
Review the payslips
Compare margin, pay timing and compliance documentation directly against your incumbent.
Join the PSL
If it stacks up, we move to a full preferred-supplier agreement across your desks.
Published, not quoted.
One figure per pay frequency, fixed for the length of the assignment. Contractors: use the take-home calculator.
* The margin leaves the assignment rate before a gross wage exists, so it reduces the pay that tax and National Insurance are charged on and costs less than the headline figure. Shown for a basic-rate taxpayer opted out of the workplace pension — £583.44 a year whichever frequency. Staying in the pension or paying higher-rate tax changes it, and this is true of every compliant umbrella margin, not only ours. The take-home calculator shows the figure for any rate.
Three frequencies. Three published numbers.
Most umbrella margins sit between £20 and £30 a week, and plenty of them are quoted as a starting figure that moves once the contractor has signed. Ours are fixed and published: £18 weekly, £72 four-weekly, £78 monthly. All £936 a year, so how often someone is paid never changes what it costs them.
The margin comes out of the assignment rate, which means it is the contractor who carries it, not your agency. That is precisely why we publish it. A worker who can see the figure before they start has nothing to query afterwards, and a consultant who can quote it from memory never has to promise to find out. Volume rates are available for PSL partners. Ask on the call.
What is fixed, whoever you are
- Same margin whether the assignment runs four weeks or four years
- Full payslip breakdown available to both the contractor and the agency
- No setup fee, no PSL joining fee, no exit fee on the trial period
- Statutory deductions itemised in full, never bundled into an admin line
- Contractors paid every Friday, against a stated cut-off rather than best efforts
The rate floor we won't go under
Our calculator refuses to price an assignment below it. We would rather tell you at the quoting stage than at payroll.
The minimum wage is not a floor on the assignment rate. It is a floor on the worker's pay for time worked, and by the time that pay exists the assignment rate has already had employer's National Insurance, the apprenticeship levy, any pension contribution and our margin taken out of it. Rolled-up holiday pay makes it tighter still, because it cannot be counted towards the minimum wage; government guidance is explicit that it is paid in addition to a rate that already clears it.
Run the arithmetic on a 37.5-hour week at the 2026/27 National Living Wage of £12.71 and the assignment rate has to be at least £16.55 an hour, or £16.88 if the worker stays in the workplace pension. Offer £12.71 an hour thinking that is minimum wage, and what actually reaches the worker is £9.74, nearly £3 an hour short, on every hour, from day one.
Those figures are for a worker aged 21 or over. The floor is lower for younger workers, and lower again than the wage difference alone would suggest, because employer’s National Insurance is zero-rated up to £967 a week for under-21s and for apprentices under 25. Our calculator applies the right rate and the right National Insurance treatment for each band rather than assuming everyone is on the adult rate.
The exposure is not evenly shared. As the employer we carry the underpayment, and HMRC's minimum wage penalties run to 200% of the arrears alongside public naming. But since April 2026 you carry PAYE exposure on the same chain, an underpaid worker's claim reaches back six years, and the naming lists are read by the clients whose PSL you sit on. A rate set too low does not stay a payroll problem.
So we check it before we quote, not after. If a rate will not clear the floor we will tell you what it needs to be and why, and we would rather lose the placement than run a payroll that cannot be defended.
What the floor is made of
- Pay for time worked at £12.71 an hour, clearing NMW on its own
- Rolled-up holiday pay at 12.07% on top, which cannot count towards NMW
- Employer's National Insurance at 15% above £96 a week
- Apprenticeship levy at 0.5%
- Employer pension at 3% of qualifying earnings, unless opted out
- Our £18 margin
Check any rate on the take-home calculator; it will not return a figure below the floor.
Where we are, in order
We'd rather publish the roadmap with dates on it than claim accreditations we don't hold yet.
SafeRec certification
SafeRec audits every payslip against the RTI data actually submitted to HMRC, which is precisely the evidence agencies need now the liability sits with them. Our assessment is in progress, with certification expected January 2027.
FCSA accreditation
We begin the FCSA pathway once SafeRec is complete, covering pay, tax and employment-rights compliance end to end. FCSA will not assess a provider until it has two years of successful operation and a full year of audited accounts, so the earliest we can hold it is September 2028, and that is our target.
What we hold right now
Neither certification yet. We are a new company and will not imply otherwise. Insurance cover in place: employers’ liability at £10m, public liability at £5m and professional indemnity at £2m. Ask us for the certificates at any point.
Who you're dealing with
A new provider with nobody's name on it is the profile agencies have been warned about. So here's ours: based in West Yorkshire, working UK-wide.
I'm an accountant with experience in both tax and management accounting since 2018. When the IR35 reforms landed I set up and ran the umbrella department at the firm I was with: payroll, timesheets, PAYE submissions and the contractor questions that come with them. RGM Pay is the second umbrella I have built. This one is mine, which is why the margin is published rather than quoted.
Reach me directly at info@rgmpay.co.uk. During a trial you deal with me, not a ticket queue.
Before you book a call
How does the trial actually work?
You pick two or three contractors to run through RGM Pay alongside your existing provider. There's no PSL paperwork at this stage, just a direct comparison of payslips, turnaround and communication.
Is the published margin really the whole of it?
Yes. £18 if the worker is paid weekly, £72 four-weekly, £78 monthly, confirmed in writing before the assignment starts, the same figure on every payslip, and it doesn't rise mid-contract. Everything else on the payslip is either the contractor's pay or a statutory deduction we don't keep a penny of. If you're placing at volume, talk to us about a lower rate, but the published number never moves upward.
Are you FCSA accredited yet?
Not yet, and we can't be for a while: FCSA requires two years of successful operation and a full year of audited accounts before it will assess a provider. We're targeting September 2028. In the meantime we're completing SafeRec certification, and we'll tell you exactly where we are rather than implying an accreditation we don't hold.
What changed for agencies in April 2026?
Since 6 April 2026, agencies can be held responsible for an umbrella company's unpaid PAYE, jointly and severally, with no statutory defence for having carried out due diligence. In practice agencies have shortened their PSLs and tightened what they ask of the providers left on them. Our documentation was built for that, not retrofitted to it.
Which sectors do you cover?
Any sector paying PAYE contractors. Umbrella payroll works the same whether the worker is a nurse, a developer or a groundworker; the deductions and the margin don't change. We know healthcare, IT, construction and industrial & warehouse best and started there, and construction adds CIS on top, but nothing about a different desk makes you a poor fit. We support placements UK-wide from a West Yorkshire base.