A key challenge for pensions dashboards will be keeping users engaged, new research by the Association of British Insurers on how people might use the dashboards has shown. Nudges within the interface or even outside of it could be a solution, but how far can these go without becoming advice? 

 

There was a long pause in the virtual meeting room at the launch of the ABI’s research on dashboards user behaviour as one participant asked what industry and government are actually seeking to do with the project: “What do we want them to do? What is the call to action?” 

 

The question pointed to an issue that could make or break the pensions dashboards. What do we expect people to do as a result of seeing their pensions? 

User behaviour can give an idea not to what people should ideally be doing, but at least what they are likely to be doing once the dashboards go live next year if the project stays on track.

 

A relatively small majority of consumers said the dashboards would help them understand their pension, but only 53% said they would be likely to use it. And even for this group, keeping them as users will not be straightforward.

Rachel Rowlinson, research director at consultancy Britain Thinks, which conducted the study for the ABI, gave some clues of what the study showed could happen. 

“Research suggests people will log in, look at it – and then forget about it,” she said. “It will be a challenge to keep them engaged; that will be a real challenge, building that habit, that frequency,” she warned. 

The research conducted suggested a range of very general next steps, such as ‘I would want to find out more information’ and ‘I would want some more personalised guidance’, but a sizeable proportion of people (30%) said they would not take any of the suggested actions. 

 

However, this group consisted predominantly of people aged 65 and over; in contrast, younger people were unlikely to say they would not follow up with some kind of action. The researchers also said young people were most likely to be a key target group, as 66% of 18-34-year-olds said they would be likely to use it compared with 28% of over-65s, and because they know little about pensions. 

 

 
 
The research also found there was appetite for interactive features, for example retirement income modellers with sliders to change contributions or retirement age and also transactability. Such features would be well received by people with higher financial confidence in particular. The research also pointed to a latent expectation that they will be available as consumers compare the dashboards to apps and websites they already use. 

 

The more financially confident “wanted to see that more open banking feature, where you pop money into a pension at the end of the month,” said Phoebe Ward, research lead at Britain Thinks. 

 

This expectation also means consumers are unlikely to tolerate any time delays between a request for information being made, and the information becoming available, particularly in an online environment. Evey Tang, a policy adviser at the ABI, said: “I don't think there was a lot of tolerance on what they need to do to check” and receive complete information, suggesting such delays would not be well received. 

 

Even assuming that the information will be immediate, it might be necessary to have nudges to keep people engaged and log in more than once. 

“There will likely be a need for nudges to get consumers to take further actions rather than just looking,” Rowlinson said. These could be interface nudges or prompts through communications, and nudging people to other information and next steps, but Tang pointed out that this throws up questions about crossing into advice territory, if nudges include, for example, suggestions to consolidate pensions.
 

How can the dashboards keep consumers engaged?
  

Tim Gosling

 

Richard Smith

Jon Dean

Calum Cooper