Dashboards guidance and timetable offer clarity to industry
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The Department for Work and Pensions has published a new timeline for schemes to connect to pensions dashboards in guidance form. Elsewhere, a Dashboards Operator Coalition has been launched.
The first schemes, large defined contribution master trusts, due to connect by 30 April next year, according to the guidance published on Monday. It confirms the ‘hard stop’ deadline of 31 October 2026, having been pushed back last year, but offers a staging timetable. This is in the form of guidance rather than legislation, another change made in 2023.
“The guidance gives the pension industry useful clarity on when they are expected to meet their connection obligations,” said Nigel Peaple, director of policy and advocacy at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association. “This is a complex and difficult task, but the sector is keen to do it as way of helping their scheme members better understand retirement saving.”
Rob Yuille, head of long-term savings policy at the Association of British Insurers, echoed this. The guidance "brings much needed certainty for providers on timelines to ensure that comprehensive dashboards can be delivered as soon as possible", said Yuille.
The Pensions Administration Standards Association was equally positive about the guidance and staged timetable.
“Schemes now have a clear runway showing them when they’re expected to connect, starting from Aril 2025. They can now work backwards from their assigned connection date,” the association said, noting that this can take up to 18 months.
Following last year's news that there would be no legislated timetable, there were fears that momentum behind the dashboards connection efforts could be lost.
However, the formation of a new coalition of potential dashboard providers shows the supplier side remains active.
PASA also welcomed the new coalition made up of Just Group, Legal & General, Moneyhub & Standard Life, and led by independent consultant Richard Smith.
Smith said: "My research tour of five continental pensions dashboards teams in 2023 confirmed to me that launching dashboards is a highly challenging endeavour. But the key to getting them done is very close collaboration, both across the industry, and also between industry and government."
While PASA and the Pensions Dashboards Programme are collaborating on the supply of data, he said for the ‘front-end’ consumer experience of dashboards themselves, an equivalent industry coalition was needed.
The firms said the group will work with government and regulators, noting that “some critical topics haven’t yet had detailed attention”, such as:
pre-connection audit scope;
identity service integration;
dashboards available point readiness assessment; and
