Retirees with several pensions dealt blow by dashboard delay

Government puts dashboard launch back to 2023 as data and IT issues bog down project.

Future retirees struggling with multiple pension pots have been dealt a blow today as the government’s much-hailed pensions dashboard scheme has been delayed.

Workers often amass several different pension pots across their career.

It can then be hard to keep track of how much is in your retirement savings, and leads to some pension pots being lost forever. This was meant to be addressed with the introduction of the pensions dashboard scheme.

First announced in the 2016 Budget, pensions dashboards are meant to let savers see the value of all their different retirement pots in one place online. It would replace waiting for annual statements and wading through complicated paperwork from various providers.

The government initially said these would be introduced in 2019, but the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP), which is in charge of implementing the tool, has now revealed the technology will not go live until 2023.

The PDP is currently agreeing designs and data standards for the dashboards before development and testing starts next year.

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There will then be voluntary trials in 2022 before a dashboard is made public in 2023, with new laws and Financial Conduct Authority rules making it mandatory for schemes to provide the data.

Chris Curry, principal of the PDP, says there are lots of complexities due to the different organisations involved and data needed.

He says: “While dashboards are a simple concept, the delivery of dashboards will be complex and is reliant on collaboration between the PDP and many other organisations across government, regulators, dashboard providers, pension schemes and providers to complete actions at a specific time.

“Already, through the qualitative research and the call for input, industry has provided useful insight into the challenges of verifying people’s identities and matching them to pensions.”

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Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at Quilter, described the delay as disappointing.

He says: “The pension dashboard has the potential to be game changing for the retirement saving landscape, which is still trying to claw its way into the technological age. 

“Easily being able to access all your pension information on a dashboard makes things simple and if it’s simple then people are much more likely to actual engage with their pensions.”

However, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), says a delay gives pension schemes more time to get their own systems ready, with its members saying it could take two years to prepare.

Nigel Peaple, director of policy and research at the PLSA, adds: “We continue to believe that pensions dashboards are key to improving saver engagement with their pensions and helping them to plan for retirement, and look forward to contributing further to the PDP’s work.”

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