Editorial: The industry is in agreement that for the pensions dashboard to work, schemes need to be forced to provide their data.
The only way to do this is through primary or secondary legislation, and HM Treasury has previously warned that the government would do just that if the voluntary model fails.
The problem is that this need for government to act clashes with the dashboard’s ambitious goal of going live in 2019. If the live version is too basic or has too many holes in the data, it is very possible consumers will disengage immediately, and despite its development not technically being the government’s responsibility, the dashboard will be added to the list of failed large IT projects for the UK public.
Let us not forget that the only advantage the dashboard would have over existing pension and saving apps is that it would automatically pull in pension data for you, without you having to remember where it is or even whether you had it. A truly useful dashboard would remind you of even the smallest pots.
There are already numerous slick and free apps that let you project what you need to save for retirement – taking into account not just pensions but you and your spouse’s overall wealth, income, expenditure plans for children’s education and so forth.
If the dashboard fails in its crucial objective of pulling data in automatically, ie not just giving a view of it on a single screen, but reminding people of things they have forgotten, it will end up as not much more than a low-quality app.
The Association of British Insurers, which has taken the lead in the project, appears to be of the view that ‘we need to start somewhere’ and can then build on that.
It is a pragmatic view given the 2019 deadline, but at the same time it underestimates the power of consumer expectations towards websites and apps in what is already a highly digital world.
The promise of better functionality at a later date might simply be too little to make people return to the dashboard if it does not convince at first sight.
Sandra Wolf is editor at Pensions Expert. You can follow her on Twitter @SandraCWK and the team @pensions_expert.
