3. Find data

Data standards find data

Individuals will access a dashboard and send their personal data to the identity service. The identity service will establish that they are who they say they are. Users then provide their consent to process their personal information via the consent and authorisation service.

Users’ personal information then becomes the find data that the pensions finder passes to pensions providers, which will attempt to match pensions they hold against the individual’s find data elements.

Watch our video about the pensions dashboards ecosystem for more on how this process works.

It will be up to each data provider to determine their own matching rules against this find data.

Find data elements

Our research and engagement with industry has provided a clear list of find data elements. While there is more work to do to test how widely these are available across the UK population and how providers will choose to match elements, this finite list of find data elements is unlikely to change significantly from this point.

The list below describes the data elements going to pension providers at a high level for find data.

  • first name and surname
  • date of birth
  • current address
  • National Insurance number
  • previous surname
  • previous address
  • email address
  • mobile phone number

For further detail on each of these data elements – please refer to the data standards guide.

We will engage with pensions providers as to how many, and which combinations of elements on the list, they would need to be able to match against, to identify an individual’s pension. This is important to ensure that these elements will successfully allow providers to find pensions, and to identify whether we need to provide additional guidance on how to match.

The details for an individual will be a mixture of data elements, such as name and date of birth that the identity service will verify, once it confirms the individual’s identity, and information provided directly by the individual that the identity service does not check. 

We assume that the identity service will always verify:

  • first name
  • surname
  • date of birth
  • current address

The following are included in the find data elements, although they will not initially be verified by the identity service:

  • national insurance number
  • previous address(es)
  • email address
  • mobile phone number

Some of these data elements may be verified by the identity service in the future, as additional information sources open up to identity providers. 

Pension providers should review their data now, to determine the combination of elements they need to match, to find a pension.

Next page: 4. View data

1. An introduction to data standards

2. Actions for pensions providers

5. Collaborating to create data standards

Data standards guide

FAQs

Further information on data standards

Please check our frequently asked questions for further information.

If you have any additional queries about our data standards publications please email datapdp@maps.org.uk.

Our glossary provides a useful set of definitions for some of the terms you may come across in these pages.