• The Government must ensure state pension information is available on the first version of pensions dashboards when they are launched in the UK
• Responding to a Call for Input on the scope and data requirements for dashboards, AJ Bell urges policymakers to require the vast majority of pensions – including defined benefit schemes - to participate from Day 1
• Warning that launching dashboards with missing information or data errors risks fundamentally undermining trust in pensions
Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, comments:
“The world may have changed beyond all recognition in 2020 but the problem of people losing track of old pensions has not gone away.
“Over the long-term, pensions dashboards have the potential not only to reunite people with lost pensions but also to drive greater levels of engagement and in turn value for money.
“Ensuring people trust the information they see when dashboards launch is accurate and complete will be absolutely critical in gaining legitimacy.
“It is therefore crucial that the first versions of dashboards – which are likely to show relatively basic information initially – include the vast majority of pension schemes. Given the state pension is the foundation on which most people’s retirement plans are built, details of entitlements people have built up to date must be on dashboards from Day 1.
“And while some schemes, such as those operated within the public sector, may struggle administratively to link up with dashboards, all available evidence suggests attaining full coverage will be vital to building trust in the service.
“This will be much more useful to savers than rushing out half-baked dashboards that risk misleading people about the pensions they have.
“Data security is also obviously incredibly important and providers need total confidence that the data of customers matches the request being made by any dashboard before that information is shared.”
