On the go: The Pensions Administration Standards Association will be working with the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and the Association of British Insurers to set up the standards for the pension dashboards data matching.
To be able to provide data for the project, every pension scheme and provider will need to decide what particular combination of personal data items is best to be able to match a pension to an individual, such as surname, date of birth and address, among others.
However, if schemes set their match criteria bar too high they risk pensions not being found for the user to view on a dashboard. On the other hand, setting it too low potentially risks the wrong pensions being shown to the saver, PASA explained.
Aiming to deliver industry-wide conventions that can “strike an appropriate balance between the sensitivity and specificity of matching”, the industry body is working with industry, regulatory and technology organisations.
PASA’s work will start with the PLSA and the ABI to devise solutions, while building “on existing data-matching approaches, align thinking with the small pots co-ordination group and ensure industry-wide adoptability”, it stated.
The industry group is already engaging with the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority to help ensure the thinking behind the data-matching standards are aligned with their emerging regimes for dashboards regulation.
Considering that the new standards must also work in practice, PASA is liaising closely with 11 providers of pensions administration software, which can implement the different industry matching conventions to be used on their client schemes.
However, PASA has warned that the new conventions “will not solve the matching challenge on their own”.
“As well as adopting an appropriate data-matching convention, trustees will need to work with their suppliers to implement — or build on existing — technology/data-cleansing solutions, which, in combination, will help to improve matches,” it stated.
PASA is aiming to have the first standards ready for the seven alpha providers, which will connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem from late 2021, to test in early 2022.
According to Kim Gubler, PASA’s chair, “correctly matching users to schemes’ administration records is critical for dashboards success”.
She said: “As the industry administration standards body, it makes sense for PASA to lead on developing various data-matching conventions for trustees to adopt as they wish.”
David Fairs, executive director of regulatory policy, analysis and advice at TPR, welcomed the “innovative industry collaboration”.
He added: “How to best match savers to all their pots through pensions dashboards will be a key decision for trustees.
“The creation of industry conventions should provide consistency and reassure trustees they are taking a sensible approach to complying with their dashboards duties.”
