Three reasons for advisers to get excited about pensions dashboards

Pensions dashboards have been a long time in the making, but the DWP is now driving this project through to fruition. Over recent months there has been significant step forward; the official timetable has been set and large occupational schemes and (all types of) personal pensions have to connect by next summer. A year of testing follows that, and once more than 90% of schemes are connected, dashboards will be launched onto an unsuspecting public.

Well, I say unsuspecting, but only for a short time. Because this cannot be a soft, just-mention-it-in-passing, launch. After the resource spent by both government and industry, we need people to use the dashboards. And to do that the government needs to tell them they exist, undoubtedly through a high-profile media campaign.

Pensions dashboards may be a big government project, but they will have implications for financial advisers’ and planners’ businesses. So here are three reasons to get excited about pensions dashboards.

1. They will increase pension chatter

The UK public have a love/hate relationship with pensions. Many people moan about them, but most of us want to know more about how they work and how much their own is worth. Pensions dashboards need to come in with a bang, not a whimper, and push people to use them. This is going to thrust pensions and retirement savings into the spotlight, even if only for a short while.

2. They will ease your workload

Gone are the days of clients bearing shoeboxes of past paperwork. Pensions dashboards will show them the value of each of their (not yet accessed) pensions, including public sector schemes and the state pension. This will include both a projected fund value and an estimated retirement income. This should lighten the load for you and your business in compiling the data.

However, I cannot promise the view data will always be complete. There will still be some partial matches to investigate, where the scheme might have reason to believe the user is a member but cannot fully match the record.

Users will be able to give access to their data to either a MaPS guidance specialist or a financial adviser.

3. They may offer your business a new opportunity

Different firms can host a version of the pensions dashboards. All have to show the same information, and the text and design they show the user will be carefully controlled. But the idea is that the user can ‘stumble across’ a dashboard in many different places.

The FCA is currently consulting on how this could work in practice. The pensions dashboards give a static view of a person’s pension wealth. That doesn’t help the user answer the question of what to do next. Instead, if the commercial dashboard allows, users will be able to export the data back to themselves or to the firm hosting the commercial dashboard, who can then offer the user ‘post view’ services. These services could include giving advice on their pensions – maybe increasing contributions or consolidating funds.

Users have to give permission for their data to be exported, and firms cannot make exporting the data a condition for using the commercial dashboards. They cannot pre-populate application forms either.

The best guess for the date pensions dashboards ‘go-live’ is Autumn 2024. The picture of how pensions dashboards will work in practice is becoming clearer. And these proposed rules from the FCA should give advice firms enough leeway to be able to design services to help both new clients and existing ones make the most of their pension wealth.