How far away is the pensions dashboard from becoming a reality?

In September, work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said she “backs the industry” to deliver the dashboard, following media speculation that she wanted to scrap the project.

We’ll only get the value from multiple dashboards if we have collaboration

Geraldine Brassett, PASA

The government is yet to publish its highly anticipated feasibility study on the project. The Autumn Budget has confirmed that state pension data will be included in the dashboard.

Who will oversee implementation and governance?

Experts are positive about the need for a dashboard, but the consensus is that it could take some time to reach consumers.

Anthony Rafferty, managing director at fintech company Origo, said there are questions over how the project will be implemented in terms of governance and, given that it is an industry-led dashboard, who will oversee the delivery.

Speaking at the Pensions Management Institute’s Future of Pensions Administration summit, he said: “What needs to happen next… is an independent entity will be established who will oversee the implementation and oversee the governance."

Last month, Pensions Policy Institute research conducted on behalf of the Association of British Insurers showed that an estimated 1.6m pension pots worth almost £20bn are lost and could remain unclaimed without government intervention.

The ABI said the findings highlight the need to make the pensions dashboard a reality.

Complete dashboard could be years away

However, it looks highly unlikely the dashboard will be available online by the original 2019 deadline.

Rafferty said some form of dashboard could be available in 2020, though he noted that it would not be perfect by then.

Others were not so optimistic. Gregg McClymont, director of policy and external affairs at B&CE, said a dashboard, complete with all the relevant information for savers, could be “several years” away.

While the UK project continues to stagnate, other countries are much further ahead. One example is Sweden, which established its dashboard in the early 2000s. The forecast for 2018 is that the Swedish dashboard will have had 2.7m unique visitors and around 8m log-ons.

Anders Lundström, chief executive officer of Minpension.se – the Swedish pension dashboard – since 2004, said that, from his experience, it would take between five to six years to put together a “decent” dashboard, adding that it may take until around 2025 for the UK.

Rafferty said it is embarrassing that “14 years ago, Sweden did this, and we’re still talking about it”.

Credibility concerns

Some say multiple dashboards could drive competition, but there are concerns over whether multiple dashboards will affect credibility.

McClymont said: “The costs of duplication by having multiple pension-finding services are outweighed by the competition that that drives.”

However, Geraldine Brassett, chair of the Pensions Administration Standards Association's industry policy committee and chair of PASA's Pensions Dashboard Working Group, warned: “If the terminology, the language, the presentation is vastly different across the multiple dashboards, I think we are going to lose credibility.”

She acknowledged that while multiple dashboards could drive competition, “we’ll only get the value from multiple dashboards if we have collaboration, and I think that’s going to be a balance that we as an industry are going to have to think quite hard about”.

Brassett also stressed the importance of good data quality. “Data has to be good and the data has to be reliable, and the data has to be clear,” she said, adding: “We will be releasing data guidance to help people prepare for the dashboard early next year.”

Matt Dodds, director at data company ITM, noted that many UK savers' pension pots are split across a disparate range of providers.

“We shouldn’t underestimate just how much... lack of standardisation there is, and how much work there is to do,” he said.

However, Dodds said it is important to break everything down and think about the first steps in terms of dashboard progress.

“I don’t think it does need to be that tricky for administrators in actual fact... it is not massively complicated data we’re talking about here,” he said.

“If you’ve got trouble providing what we think is likely to be the core components of the dashboard… your scheme’s got bigger problems than not being able to provide the data for the dashboard," Dodds added.