On the go: The Money and Pensions Service is increasing its focus on pensions dashboards as a way to deliver for customers, according to its new business plan.
In its corporate plan for 2020-21, published on Tuesday, the government-backed guidance body said it had altered its second objective to focus solely on developing a pensions dashboard “to give people the tools and information needed to take ownership of their pensions by enabling them to see all their pensions in one place”.
Previously, the goal to “deliver for customers” also included leading sector-wide initiatives to enhance the quality and capacity of guidance services.
The Department for Work and Pensions confirmed in December 2018 that it will seek to foster the creation of multiple pensions dashboards, with the first one developed by Maps.
The industry delivery group will set out a timetable for other fully operational dashboards, as well as setting standards and ensuring security across the portals.
In 2020-21, Maps’ Pensions Dashboards Programme will continue working with consumer groups and industry to define the requirements for the digital architecture and agree the data that schemes will be required to provide to people, it stated.
A key priority will also be to work with the regulators to understand the challenges that these requirements may place on schemes, the organisation added.
Overall, Maps changed its priorities after seeing a drop in demand for pensions guidance and a shift towards other financial matters due to the coronavirus crisis.
To deal with this the organisation has adapted its original overarching priorities to place a greater focus on Covid-19 and the need for pensions and money guidance.
Its budget for 2020-21 is £140.9m, split up as £129.7m for resource spending, £400,000 for capital spending, and £10.8m for the Pensions Dashboards Programme.
