PDP dashboard provider webinar: part 1

Raman Dhaliwal

in general and those wanting to work with us during the early phase of the programme and those wanting to work with us during the early testing phase of the programme, in particular, which some of you may also refer to as sort of the alpha phase the test. So, before we go any further I just wanted to notify you all that we are recording this session today. And okay, so can we go to the next slide, please, Caroline.

So, what we will do today is we'll give you a bit of background to the programme, and overview of the architecture and the dashboard interactions and some key aspects for you to be aware of, and what our expectations are. And then there'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions. Feel free to put your questions in the chat field as we go. Along. We will try and answer all your questions and any that we are unable to even respond in writing via our dashboard providers hub. And before I ask my colleagues to introduce themselves, I'd just like to say that we will be observing one minute silence for Sir David at 230 and Caroline, talk to us for that. So I have a few colleagues who have joined me today. And so let me start by introducing them to you, Caroline, would you like to go first phase?

Caroline Kyriazis

Hi I'm Caroline, I'm communications Engagement Manager for the programme.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you Caroline. James?

James Reardon

Good afternoon everyone, I'm James Reardon, the head of technology development for the programme

Raman Dhaliwal

And Helen?

Helen Scriminger

Hi, i'm Helen, I'm the product owner for the central digital architecture.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you all and I just sort of remembered I haven't introduced myself my name is Rama Dhaliwal and I am head of product for Pensions Dashboard Programmes. Caroline, can we go to the next slide please?

So the vision, our vision is to enable individuals to access their pensions information online securely, and all in one place, thereby supporting better planning for retirement and creating financial wellbeing. And how are we going to do this? We will do this by delivering the technical architecture that is necessary for the dashboard service to operate, making sure that the architecture is secure, efficient, and effective. And it's based on technology that is flexible, it's scalable, and it is extensible. Our goals pensions dashboard programme So, just wanted to quickly go through what our goals are for the programme. We know that people find pensions very confusing, and most people do not connect with their pensions until much later in their career. And there can be several reasons for them for that long. They're confusing, and they're quite difficult. To sort of the information is quite difficult to understand the goals of the pensions dashboard service after connecting people with their pensions, presenting the information clearly and in plain English. enabling people to understand what they are seeing and signposting them to impartial guidance and or regulated advice. The aim is to increase people's competence, empowering them to make more informed choices about their pensions, ultimately contributing to people's financial well being in retirement. Could we go to the next slide please, Caroline. So just to give you a brief history to the background of where we are right now. In 2016, following the announcement and the budget by government, the industry led project managed by Association of British Insurers set out to create a prototype dashboard to demonstrate that a user sitting at a dashboard potentially could be connected to a range of pension savings that they may have with different pensions, providers or schemes. In 2017, the prototype project published its findings and in 2018, the government launched a consultation it started the feasibility study and launched a consultation to to understand the best way to deliver this architecture, the pensions dashboard service and to establish the basic principles in 2019 the money and Pension Service was asked to take this work forward and the began by setting up the metrics dashboard programme to develop the separate digital architecture to enable the operations of the dashboards. In 2020. The team and others undertook industry consultation that led to the first issue of the data standards. And we also prepared for the technical requirements to start the procurement of an organisation who would then the central architecture for us in 2021 Capgemini and Oracle are appointed to develop this central architecture, the pensions dashboard programme and also defined what we will be doing during our alpha and beta phases and we started our engagement with data providers and dashboard providers. So this is part of that progression of work. I will now sort of will share a video which will, from a user perspective, demonstrate what it will feel like for the user to be using the pensions dashboard. It is a video that some of you may already have seen but here it is to give a quick refresher on how it will feel for us. Caroline over to you.

Video

With more than two thirds of people holding multiple pensions. It can be tricky to get a clear and complete picture of your pension. We set up a pensions dashboards programme or PDP. To tackle this challenge. Dashboards will be the place where you can view information about your pensions in a clear and simple format. But it takes a lot to make that happen. You begin your journey by navigating to a dashboard. Then you submit a request to find your pensions information, which is where things get a bit more involved. First, to keep your data safe. An identity service confirms that you are who you claim to be. You will be asked to give consent for your information to be used. To perform the search on your bench and to authorise providers to send your pensions information to the dashboard for you to view you can withdraw your consent at any time. The pension Finder service takes over importantly it is not a database, more like a switchboard it never holds any personal or pensions data. The pension Finder service sends your request to all pension providers and schemas, which return a unique identifier to the dashboard for each matching pension. Then you can request the pensions information, which the providers and schemes will send directly to the dashboard where only you can access it. Pensions data will need to conform to a new standard. We are developing this standard with feedback from users as well as government and industry stakeholders to ensure it works for everyone involved. To keep your data safe. The governance register will ensure the pensions dashboards ecosystem meets the required security and performance standards and dashboards will enable you to view your pensions information online securely and all in one place. So you can get a clearer picture of your pensions.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you, Caroline. I pass you on now to James to take us through or give us an overview of the architecture the central architecture over to you James.

James Reardon

Thank you, Raman. Can we move on to the next slide please? So I'm going to briefly take you through the spaghetti diagram. On the left hand side. I will take you through the user journeys at a high level. And then my colleague Alex Greninja. will detail some of the API's that are involved in those interactions. So there are two main kind of processes through the dashboard. The first one is the find process. So this is where it user accesses a dashboard. They may be new user to dashboards in general they may be a new user to that specific dashboard, or they may be returning user who's looking for more pensions. But in any event, they will want to find their pensions and they will be redirected to the consent and authorization service which is part of the core technical architecture. That core consent and authorization service will then validate whether the user has an existing ID token, ie they are a returning user or in the event that they are a new user. They will be redirected to the identity service to confirm their identity. That user will then go through the process at the identity service to confirm their identity and then they will be given authentication, which to us on the consent and authorization service. With that information and any supplemental information that they provide. They can then send out a pension find request to all data providers or specific data providers to search for any pension assets that they may have. In the background, data providers will then search your records for any records that match that individual and any event that they do find a matching record. They will then return a pension identifier which we have called API which will be locked against that pension assets. Those PRs for that individual and then stored at the consent authorization service to make available for dashboards to retrieve. So that's effectively what happens when a user goes through the find process. When a user then opts to view those pension assets, again, they will probably be a returning user in that instance, they would log on to their dashboard. And the dashboard would then take those PI's which are currently dereferenced and we would resolve those to a resource location APA data provider. So if you look at the diagram, you can see on the left hand side and API running directly between dashboard and the provider. At that point, the provider would confirm that the consent is in place for the dashboard to view that data. And it does that via the API you can see running from the bottom up to the consent and authorization service. In the event that that consent is there, then the data provider can release that information to the dashboard where it's presented to the user. So those are the two main routes through the central technical architecture. And I'll pass over to my colleague Helen, who will take you through the detail of the API's which are involved, Helen.

Helen Scriminger

Thank you, James. So this site looks a bit busy. I apologise for that. But what this is doing is showing the technical API's that dashboards data providers will need to implement in order to access it. So the first being pull bi, so go and get the identifier. Second, one being a blend point. So we have the notion of the VI, which results to an endpoint data provider. And as a dashboard, You'll now need to know effectively the address that you have to knock on the door for this the View API. So once you have the pension identification information, you'll need to initiate a call of the API that is with the relevant data provider or that PII. And then this is all wrapped up. In something in security using the Uber protocol, apologies I dogs crying in the background, so I apologise for that now. I won't go through the data providers API's unless anyone wants me to. But we're developing these with the industry through our ecosystem Technical Working Group. But we've brought SMEs together from a number of organisations and anyone is anyone's allowed to join. There's no There's no specific requirements. Just if you're interested in connecting to the ecosystem. We want all the voices that we can get. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? If you do, you'll need to put them in the chatbox.

Raman Dhaliwal

Helen, there aren't any questions but do you want to tell people how they can join the group the ETWG

Helen Scriminger

if you go into onto the website, either contact info, pension, pensions, PDP or events, pensions, PDP. These are will get you through to us and we'll add you to the attendees.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you for that. There are no questions so we will proceed and then we will take any questions that can we have the next slide please, Caroline? Thank you so, just thought we would take you through the timeline for the next six months which is sort of the critical aspect for the test phase of this programme. So we are doing two webinars. The first one is taking place today. The second webinar will take place on the 21st of October. We will then any we will issue questionnaires to those who expressed an interest to work with us during the test phase for us to sort of understand a little bit more about the organisation that you represent. So people who are expressing an interest will be sent a question over as soon as we receive your expression of interest. I think the first setup question is will either be sent out today or early morning tomorrow for those organisations who have already expressed an interest and so we expect the completed questionnaires to be returned to us by the fifth of November, after which we will do a small selection exercise. For organisations that be selected to work with us. We aim to announce the successful candidates who are going to be working with us during alpha by mid December. And at the same time, although we are going to be sort of in alpha from December onwards like the test phase from December, we are going to start planning on how we select dashboard providers for beta onwards. We'll cover that a little bit later and Helen takes us through some of the process. And in January, February and March. What we will be doing is working very closely with the Select organisations that are selected. During this period. We will also be undertaking quite a substantial amount of user research. And the user research will be focusing on the front end dashboard design, the end to end user journey as well. During this period, it's critical that organisations that are selected will be expected to work really closely with us in in sharing their research and taking on board the findings of the research that we do and looking at how we respond then to to the user research by improving the design or amending the design etc. So this will carry on till about March April. James you have put something in there. Do you want to come in? Okay, so that was in response to answer this question. Sorry. Thank you. Okay, so we don't expect the technical onboarding to take place during this period. It is more about working with us to understand the aspects and also working with us, for you to understand what the technical architecture and the requirements will be. I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. Later. I think for the next slide. I mean, are we going back to Helen for the next set of slides? Yes. Helen, over to you for the next slide, please.

Helen Scriminger

Hi, thank you, Raman. So in order to dashboards will be in a regulated activity will know it's a new regulated activity by the FCA. So, or anyone who wishes to become a dashboard will need to be authorised by the FCA. So that means they will need to abide by the current FCA rules and also take on this new authorised activity. As no regulation is currently in place. Access to the testing will be undertaken. On the understanding that authorization may not want to be guaranteed or automatic when the regime is put in place. It's expected once the programme moves from testing into a service using real data authorization will be mandated. Next slide please.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you Helen. So we are planning to select two to three dashboard providers for the test phase for the alpha test phase. Now we're not using real data during Alpha. Once you're connected, we will probably be working on dummy data and working with us during alpha will allow you to provide input into the development of the key processes that will be needed to support the onboarding, the technical onboarding, and the management of the dashboard provider community. It will also sort of support the development of the service and design standards that will underpin underpinned the presentation of the pension data on dashboards. This sort of we expect to be assisted or be one of the outcomes of the user research that we'd be undertaking during that time. also help with the development of the regulations and how these regulations are applied by the Financial Conduct. Authority. Helen mentioned those in the previous slide, provide input into the testing of the architecture and gain insight into the development of the architecture. However, I would like to point out that we will also be sharing our findings and knowledge openly by a range of means using our hub and potentially more webinars or any other means, depending on the type of information that we're looking to share. Can we go to the next slide please? Caroline? Thank you. So in return, what do we ask of you we want to we would like you to be open and collaborative with with us with other dashboard providers in sharing existing knowledge and research and be able to commit resource to to this work and if possible, be able to provide a willing client base who can who can participate and support the testing work. Also be able to share your dashboard prototype for testing and responding to the user research. And finally, it's important for me to point out that organisations that we select, we should not have previously had any authorization by the Financial Conduct Authority withdrawn. So that was the end of the information that we wanted to provide you. So I'd like to say thank you for joining us today. I hope you found this information useful. If there's anything else you would like, please drop that in the chat as well. And, and we can then pick that up either in writing or or in the webinar that we are going to conduct on the 21st. Broadly, the information on the next webinar will be very similar to what we went through today, unless there are any specific requests for further information, which we will include then we'll modify the presentation and I haven't been going through the questions. Helen or James if you have been would you like to pick up?

James Reardon

Hi, Raman. Yes, I think Helens may be responding to Charlie's last question with her governance hat on. There we go. Thank you very much, Helen.

Helen Scriminger

Just gonna say you'll need FCA, you can get FCA that authorization at any time, it's the additional regulated activity when coming into the FCA is conduct of business have been rules issued

James Reardon

and just to pick up your earlier question Charlie, in terms of if you're not an alpha participant, I think that the number of alpha participants is strictly limited, because obviously they are participating whilst we're going through the build phase. Following that, there will be opportunities for other participants to join as data providers as I said, it would just be a matter of scheduling to ensure that we're not overwhelmed at any one given point in time.

Raman Dhaliwal

Thank you, James. That's really helpful. And also, Charlie. Just wanted to point out that if an organisation is selected to be an alpha participant, it doesn't guarantee them being a participant to betta as well. They would have to satisfy certain criteria to be a participant in beta where we will be using like customer data to do the further development of the service. So I'm starting from the bottom. So Ian's question at what point will real customers be seeing data is that in beta? The answer to that is yes. And but in early stages of beta, which we're calling beta, private beta one. And the service will be available to very limited select users. I think it'll only be users that we invite specifically to participate in the test phase.

Yes, to Charlie's question, yes, you could be accepted for beta, having not participated in alpha. I'm doing this the wrong way around the bureau approaching 230 So Caroline, could you sort of manage the time for the one minute silence, please? Yes, yes, we just take a moment now to observe minute's silence Thank you. Yeah, let's do that. Thank you.

James Reardon

I'll quickly pick up on just on Charlie's question yet that alpha, alpha and beta are just purely for to denote the programme phases. So you could potentially be joining at any point during private or even public beta as a dashboard provider would make a difference. Rather than I don't know if you want to go into detail on e and McIntyre's question in terms of what customers see on screen and layout with regards to the design standards.

Raman Dhaliwal

in so what we will be doing in alpha though, that's one of the things that we will be doing so we will not be using real data. So the focus is on dummy data and what customers see on screen and how does the layout How do users customers respond to the layout and the information that they see? So it'd be more around the design so anything any information that we gain during alpha will be used to feed into any design guidance and the design standards that the programme will be developing? We will continue to develop the design as customers see their real data when they are in beta in the control testing. as well. Because from experience, I know that a customer's response to dummy data is different to a customer's response to when they see their own data. So we may gain a bit more or a lot more insight as we go into alpha sorry, into beta. So for me, it is an ongoing process of ensuring that the design and what customers see on screen enables them to understand their pension position.

Any other questions?

So Charlie, your question Yes, Sir James has answered that that's correct.

If there are no further questions

okay. Are there any restrictions on what other value added services may be offered by the provider over and above the facilities already? described? Helen, do you want to take that

Helen Scriminger

What you choose to provide currently is no apart from within the design standards were maybe restrictions on advertising, etc. However, it should you should bear in mind that the view data that is viewed is viewed by the human currently wouldn't anticipate it being stored at the dashboard. So I hope that answers your question awake

Raman Dhaliwal

right, thank you.

Caroline doesn't look like we have any further questions, but if people do have further questions, please feel free to email us on info [email protected] And the next webinar is on 21st. If there are other people that you know who may be interested in attending, please let them know and ask them to register how can they register Caroline for the webinars? And there's a link on our website. But I will follow up with all participants and share a recording for this webinar, as well as a link to register for the webinar on Thursday. Thank you very much. So all that's left now is for me to say thank you to all of you for attending. We hope you found it useful if you do have any further questions. If you feel there are areas that we could cover please do let us know. Do you get back to us? And hope to hear from you all and yes, I think the answer to the slides is uh Yes, Karen I guess I'll share those everybody that's participated so they can they can view those along with the recording of the webinar. Yeah, yes. Thank you very much, everyone. Bye.