How to connect

Who's involved

• primary business contact (PBC)
• security lead

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities. We recommend you identify the people in your organisation who will be involved in each step as soon as possible.

What you need to do

You should be familiar with the the pensions dashboards standards and guidance which contain the rules and controls for connecting to the ecosystem.

Before you can apply to connect, you need to show that your organisation is technically robust and has a pension provider or scheme willing to vouch for you.

• Vouching scheme requirements and responsibilities
• How to get a registration code for your vouching scheme
• Begin preparation to conduct an IT
Health Check or penetration test

Pension providers and schemes can then obtain a registration code from their regulator and, if using a third-party administrator or ISP to connect, provide it to them.

Next steps

You can move onto preregistration.

Who’s involved

• primary business contact
• primary technical contact
• technical teams

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.

What you need to do

This is where you register interest in connecting to the dashboards ecosystem. You need to show that your organisation has a valid reason to connect to the ecosystem, prove your identity and show that you have the staff to perform the roles we need.

1. Preregistration

Next steps

Once you've completed this stage successfully, you can move onto registration.

Who’s involved

• primary business contact (PBC)

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.

What you need to do

You now register your organisation and your first provider or scheme. Once you’ve created a PBC account for yourself, you need to create accounts for all your organisation’s users.

2. Create a PBC account and register your organisation

3. Register first pension provider or scheme and provide technical details

4. Create additional users

Next steps

Your user accounts will be verified within a day. Once this is completed, we will guide you through the process of technical connection.

Who’s involved

• primary business contact
• primary technical contact
• test manager
• security lead
• service lead

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.

What you need to do

You should review the system and integration testing resources before you begin.

5. Prerequisites

6. Download test cryptographic material (for more information, read the guidance on PKI and cryptographic materials)

7. Submit IT Health Check evidence

8. Integration testing

9. Service acceptance

10. Provide live endpoints

11. Download live cryptographic material

12. Operational acceptance testing (OAT) and transition into live

Next steps

After successfully connecting to the ecosystem, you can manage your connection and add pension providers and schemes.

If you are an integrated service provider or third-party administrator, you can add pension providers and schemes.

Change connection plans

If a pension provider or scheme is planning to connect more than 30 days before or after their ‘connect by’ date in guidance, you can notify PDP and the relevant regulator of a change in connection plans.

• Pension provider or scheme data management
• Account and organisation data management
• Manage cryptographic materials
• Technical change
• Transfer of pension providers or schemes: Ceding provider
• Transfer of pension providers or schemes: Acquiring provider
• Submit new IT Health Check (ITHC) or penetration test
• Planned and unplanned downtime

User account management

Manage user accounts in the connection portal.

• Roles and responsibilities
• Activate or deactivate a user account
• Reset account
• Reset multifactor authentication (MFA)
• Reset password