42% pension schemes admit uncertainty on dashboard deadlines

Research has discovered that 42% of trustees and pensions managers admit that they are not aware of when their scheme’s pensions dashboard staging date will be.

In contrast, Willis Towers Watson (WTW) found that over a third are aware of the timings but are worried that they may not be able to achieve the requirements in time.

Dashboard deadlines are fast approaching for many pension schemes. Despite ongoing government and regulator-led consultations, larger schemes and master trusts will start linking up to the dashboard’s ecosystem – known as ‘staging’ – in April 2023.

Elsewhere, medium-sized schemes will follow a year later, from April 2024.

Commenting on the figures, Jane Murray, managing director for technology & administration solutions at WTW, explained: “Although the regulations remain in draft, and consultations are ongoing, it’s unlikely that the requirements will fundamentally differ from those we have sight of now.

“Meeting the criteria required for dashboard’s integration will require more commitment, information and collaboration than any previous change the pensions industry has seen.”

Two-thirds of trustees and pensions managers surveyed expressed concerns about the accuracy and availability of relevant data that will be needed to complete the process.

Murray added: “There are some knotty issues which pension schemes need to resolve before staging, such as calculating and providing estimated retirement income (ERI) values, and so it’s very important that all the underlying data being used is accurate.”

With this in mind, WTW has shared advice the schemes can take to prepare themselves for staging. For example, these include cleaning data, plotting steps that need to be taken in order to meet staging obligations, assessing whether there are benefits to staging early and communicating plans to members.

“Pension schemes should be having early discussions with their third-party administrators and systems providers to establish how they can make sure their scheme can meet the technical standards and is ready for connection when the time comes, as well as ensuring they understand their data-readiness,” Murray enthused.

While a number of worries were raised by respondents, they also highlighted several benefits. In fact, 52% agreed that they thought the biggest benefit of the dashboard would be pensions scheme members’ ability to see all their pensions information in one place.

In addition, a quarter said that the biggest plus would be enabling more accurate retirement planning.

“With any kind of initiative of this magnitude, a huge amount of work needs to happen behind the scenes. But pensions dashboards have been created to help members to keep track of their pension pots across all their historic employment as well as their state pension entitlement,” Murray continued.

“For the first time people will be able to log into one platform and view all their pensions in the same place, and that can only be a good thing for people’s financial wellbeing and peace of mind.”

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