Pensions dashboard will not be ready until 2023

In a progress update report, the current and upcoming phases of the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) have been outlined:

• Phase 1 (from 2020) - Programme setup and planning: Currently underway, upcoming steps in this phase include the programme agreeing the architecture, completing procurement for a supplier(s) for the digital architecture and setting the first version of data standards, which are expected to be published in December 2020.
• Phase 2 (from 2021) - Develop and test: The PDP will work closely with the chosen supplier(s) to quickly begin building, integration and testing of the digital architecture of dashboards. The PDP will continue to develop design and service standards and select the first dashboard providers for user testing.
• Phase 3 (from 2022) - Voluntary onboarding and testing: The PDP will connect volunteer pension schemes and providers to the service, using real data.
• Phase 4 (from 2023) - Staged onboarding and dashboards to be available: Schemes and providers will begin to be compelled (by law and Financial Conduct Authority rules respectively) to connect to the dashboards ecosystem. It is expected that during this phase, there will be sufficient findable pensions so that dashboards will be ready to be offered to consumers. This is known as the ‘dashboards available point’.
• Phase 5 - Transition to business as usual: In this phase it is anticipated there will be a high level of coverage of people’s pensions, meaning that the service is running in a steady state and can be transitioned into an ongoing delivery and maintenance arrangement.

Chris Curry, principal of the PDP, said: “While dashboards are a simple concept, the delivery of dashboards will be complex and is reliant on collaboration between the PDP and many other organisations across the government, regulators, dashboard providers, pension schemes and providers to complete actions at a specific time.

“Already, through the qualitative research and the call for input, industry has provided useful insight into the challenges of verifying people’s identities and matching them to pensions. We are working on defining our requirements for this, which will provide greater clarity. We will continue to work with industry to find and develop robust solutions to these and other challenges.

“The first version of the data standards, which will be published in December, will enable industry to take action and take the next steps in making pensions dashboards a reality.”