Pensions dashboards are coming to town (eventually)

Back in its Financial Advice Market Review of 2016 the FCA recommended the Treasury should challenge the industry to make a pensions dashboard available to consumers by 2019. Even then the concept of a dashboard wasn’t new – the recommendation was made due to the limited progress that had been made to date.

As we approach the end of 2022, three years after the target go-live date, we still have no dashboard.

We may be way behind target but make no mistake, now the government has taken the reins, the dashboard project is gathering momentum and accelerating rapidly. 2022 has seen numerous consultations relating to dashboards (in the plural we now know, not just the singular as mooted at outset). The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has been set up by the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), but there are lots of other parties in on the act too, including DWP, FCA, TPR and the FRC. The latest pieces of the jigsaw are TPR’s consultation on its compliance and enforcement policy, and the FCA’s consultation on the regulatory framework for those firms who want to offer a pensions dashboard to their customers, both of which are open until February 2023.

Although some of the final details are still being worked on we have the big picture. The official timetable has been set and personal pensions and large occupational schemes have to connect to a dashboard by summer 2023. After a year for testing, and once we get to the point of more than 90% schemes being connected, dashboards should go live in 2024.

Given the government resources put into the project I would expect the launch to be substantial. There would be no point in years of development and consultation, not to mention big spending, if it wasn’t followed up with a big media campaign so the public knows all about it.

So, does this mean the whole country will get as excited about pensions as those of us in the industry? Probably not. But it should get people talking, and maybe get people thinking about what they should do with their new-found pension, or how they should be boosting what they can see to have a more comfortable retirement.

It should make advisers’ lives easier too. You may have clients coming to you with information about pensions they’ve discovered, and they can give you authorisation to access their details on the dashboard. That’s got to be better than you and your team having to do the digging with each provider.

Better late than never.