On the go: The government has revealed that providers that fail to supply data for the pensions dashboards could be fined up to £50,000 by the Pensions Regulator.
The pensions bill launched on Wednesday, which outlined the government’s commitment to the creation of a framework to support the dashboard project, included new rules to compel pension schemes to provide accurate information to consumers, reported Pensions Expert’s sister publication FTAdviser.
These new rules would give TPR the power to issue compliance notices and penalty notices to parties that do not supply data to the project. Specifically, it will be able to fine businesses £50,000 and an individual up to £5,000 for non-compliance.
The Department for Work and Pensions confirmed in December that it will seek to foster the creation of multiple pension dashboards, with the first one developed by the Money and Pensions Service.
An industry delivery group brought together by the guidance body will set out a timetable for other fully operational dashboards, as well as setting standards and ensuring security across the portals.
Romi Savova, chief executive of PensionBee and a member of the pension dashboards steering group, told FTAdviser the new fines are fully in line with the existing maximum limits TPR can apply to schemes.
She said: “The compliance provisions make clear that sending data to dashboards is a serious and important obligation for pension schemes and provides all the more reason for schemes to get on top of their data cleansing and digitisation activities.”
Besides making data delivery from pension schemes to the dashboards mandatory, the document also includes provisions for state pension data to be included. However, the details of how this data will be presented, and a projected timeline for the delivery of the dashboard, are yet to be announced.
Chris Curry, principal of the pensions dashboard industry delivery group, told FTAdviser: “It is clear that the state pension [data] will be included at some point, what we are still working through is at what stage it will be included, and how that will operate in practice – in the same way that we are still working with all the other types of pension, what the ordering might be and how it might come in.
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He added: “We do not want to rush something out that is not going to be useful for consumers and is not going to be something of value.”
