Getting ready for pensions dashboards

The deadline for pension schemes to be dashboard ready is getting closer

Pensions dashboards are digital services — apps, websites or other tools — which savers will be able to use to see their pension information in one place.

As a pension trustee or scheme manager, you will need to connect with and supply pensions information to savers through dashboards. Some schemes are already making good progress in connecting to the ‘ecosystem’ by their connect by date, but we know many are struggling with competing priorities.

By 2025, more than 80% of UK pension members will have schemes connected to the ecosystem.

There will be significant work involved in successfully connecting to pensions dashboards. Regardless of your connect by date, we strongly advise you to start preparing as soon as possible. For example, administrators need to understand where this fits alongside other priorities and factor dashboard readiness timescales into wider data cleansing projects as part of their strategic journey planning.

With the threat of fines for non-compliance focusing minds, we are helping schemes get ready for dashboards and to start looking through a dashboard lens.

What should you do as a minimum?

With the ultimate responsibility lying with trustees of pension schemes to make sure they comply with pensions dashboards regulations, we recommend that as a minimum trustees receive training on what has to be done and are aware of their connect by date to the ecosystem. From that a plan of action can be developed, and responsibilities defined as to who will undertake the various tasks and when.

You should be able to rely on your pension administrators for significant support in helping you comply with the regulations, but you should have early dialogue with them to secure their commitment and resource to the work that has to be done. There are also likely to be other parties you need to engage with (eg lawyers), and establishing early the issues you might face and considering how you might deal with them will be key to the ultimate success of your project.

How to develop a plan for pensions dashboards

We are helping pension schemes develop their plan of action, and to agree what next. Projects of this nature could be problematic where there are resource constraints, particularly for in-house administrators and where there are complex benefit structures.

A good way to start the process can be getting the key parties together in a workshop. We are talking to schemes of all sizes about the implementation of pensions dashboards. Please get in touch if you would like further support.

Your pensions dashboard project stages

1. Establish your staging date
2. Undertake trustee training
3. Develop an action plan
4. Secure resource and commitment