The highly anticipated pensions dashboard prototype has been unveiled to government ministers in a two-day initative as part of UK Fintech Week.
Headed up by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), the dashboard project will not be rolled out until 2019, but its data standards – technical information on data presentation requirements for firms – are now in the public domain.
As a cross-industry collaboration involving HM Treasury, 17 pension firms and six technology companies, along with extra support from regulators, the dashboard is likely to be available under several providers as opposed to being a central vehicle.
While the 17 providers currently involved in the project participated on a voluntary basis, Simon Kirby, economic secretary to the Treasury, has proposed making future participation mandatory for firms.
Mr Kirby said he is in talks “with the minister for pensions to see how this might be made compulsory if schemes do not do so by choice”.
Toni Carver, business development and technical manager at advisory firm Armstrong Watson, embraced the likely move to make provider participation obligatory.
Ms Carver said: “This would be welcomed. If the framework can be created to support the technology and ensure all providers can connect and share pension data in one uniformed way, then it certainly could make the job easier for individuals accumulating savings for retirement.”
Speaking to Money Management’s sister publication FTAdviser.com in February, Ian McKenna, a member of the Treasury steering group, suggested that the dashboard could see the cost of financial advice cut by 25 per cent.
However, while a number of industry professionals agree that the dashboard may help to reduce time spent on administration, not everyone is as confident in this assertion.
Richard Borrington, business owner and financial planner at Leicester-based Boolers, said: “Like all things, the devil will be in the detail. If it’s just the headline figures of what the fund value is, who it’s with and what income it could generate, then there’s still a full layer of investigation that you would need to do on top of that.”
Ms Carver echoes the sentiment that predicting cuts to administration costs is premature at this stage. She said: “It’s too early to predict. One could argue that technology of this kind is not going to be without cost, and providers who are not willing to commit to the outlay required, or even the need to outsource to third-party specialists, will need to be financed from somewhere.”
Other suggestions for the dashboard include calls for retirement savings vehicles like the recently launched Lifetime Isa to be included.
Mr Borrington commented: “If it’s being called a pensions dashboard, it might be somewhat confusing if there are Isas in there as well. But there’s a real value to the concept of having everyone’s pensions and Isas on a [single] platform because then they can see what they’ve got and where they need to get to.”
