The single biggest change in the way the UK saves, engages and plans for retirement in a generation — the pensions dashboards — is coming, and sooner than providers and schemes may realise.
Despite the first mandatory connection deadline — which was slated for August 2023 — now being scrapped in pension minister Laura Trott’s announcement on June 8, we have confirmation on approach and a new backstop date of October 2026.
The next step for this ambitious project is the Pensions Dashboards Programme reinstating connections to the central digital architecture, which we are awaiting guidance on this autumn.
While we wait, advisers and pension providers should take this time to get their houses in order. Do not leave preparations to the last minute. Think now about how you are going to get the most out of pensions dashboards for both you and your clients.
How we proved dashboards connect
Apart from being another crucial step closer towards achieving a truly open finance system, pensions dashboards will ultimately shine a spotlight into those dark, dusty and cobweb-filled corners of the pensions world, because everything, including decades old paper-based systems and records, has to connect to one centralised digital ecosystem.
Connections are one vital aspect of the dashboards — the other is data, and it is interesting to think about the pipes, processes and protocols that are going to drive and facilitate this groundbreaking project.
Recently, we teamed up with Moneyhub to showcase for the very first time a fully operational front and back-end pensions dashboard that demonstrates how a saver will be able to use a commercial pensions dashboard to find and view their pensions.
As an integrated service provider, our role in this project was to facilitate a connection between the PDP’s CDA and pension providers and schemes’ member data.
The ISP accepts find and view requests and returns matches between individuals and their pensions information.
In a UK first, we proved that the technology works and can operate successfully, and all the data pipes flow as intended. This shows that all we are waiting for now is for the government to do its part in the middle by reinstating connections to the CDA.
Dashboards aren’t databases
Data in pensions dashboards comes from various sources, often known as administrative units. These are the pension providers and schemes, or other financial institutions.
How useful pensions dashboards are will depend on how the data they supply is served up. But people are still struggling with the idea that a pensions dashboard is not a database. In fact, there is no one single place where anybody’s pensions data exists.
The CDA the government is running only contains reference data. Therefore, to use a dashboard an individual will have to go through identity verification.
The pension asset located through the find service will also need to be identified, and that information and where it came from will be in the form of a string of seemingly random data.
