Helping individuals engage with their pensions more easily will help the industry attract new savers, ensuring even more people are preparing for later life, says Guy Opperman, minister for pensions and financial inclusion.
One area in particular has been in the spotlight over the summer, and I set out our position on a pensions dashboard in a written statement to parliament in September.
An industry-led dashboard, facilitated by government, will harness the best of industry innovation
As I said then and reiterate now, the pensions dashboard will offer people the opportunity to access their pension information in a clear and simple form – bringing together an individual’s savings in a single place online.
DWP continues to engage with industry
The statement made clear that the work the Department for Work and Pensions has done in assessing feasibility for a pensions dashboard has shown that we should not underestimate the size or complexity of the challenge.
An industry-led dashboard, facilitated by government, will harness the best of industry innovation.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will continue to engage with industry on the right model and government will protect pension savers and information by legislating where necessary.
This will build on the ‘check your state pension’ online service for the state pension, which recently hit the milestone of 10m forecasts – demonstrating the value of such a portal.
We will shortly report on the findings from the feasibility study on the dashboard, and move forward in conjunction with industry from there.
The success of auto-enrolment, with 84 per cent of eligible employees now saving into a workplace pension, means more people than ever before are engaged in what their retirement pot will look like.
Services already exist that provide the means for people to obtain details of their existing and future pensions.
In addition to ‘check your state pension’, the Pension Tracing Service helps people to locate their lost pension savings easily and quickly.
'One stop shop' set to help savers
Another major strand of work has been the establishment of the single financial guidance body, which will launch in January 2019. This new service will join together three existing bodies – Pension Wise, the Pensions Advisory Service and the Money Advice Service – that help millions of people each year.
These are great services that offer people expert guidance on what they can do with their money. But when people need help they want to be able to get all the answers in one place to solve their problem as quickly as possible and then get on with their lives.
That is why bringing these services together will help people across the country get the free, impartial advice and guidance that they need.
This new ‘one stop shop’ will give people a place to turn to for support when they need answers on their money, their pension and their future financial plans.
This is an important step on the path to creating more accessible financial services as millions more people are saving through auto-enrolment.
Pension saving in this country has been transformed and these measures will help to cement the progress made through auto-enrolment, giving savers more information on their pensions.
If we are able to help savers engage with their pensions more easily, this will help the industry attract new savers, ensuring even more people are preparing for later life.
Guy Opperman is minister for pensions and financial inclusion
