Pensions Dashboards Programme provides opportunity to influence the order and timings of staged connection to dashboards

The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has issued a call for input on proposals for the staged compulsory connection of pension providers to the dashboards ecosystem.

This provides a key opportunity for the industry to respond. The feedback will help inform policy development ahead of the legislation that will bring this compulsion into effect.

The PDP is asking pension providers, schemes, third party administrators, integrated service providers, consumer groups and other stakeholders to comment on the proposed order and timing of the staged connection of pension providers to the dashboards ecosystem. The call for input is open with immediate effect and will run until Friday 9 July 2021.

The proposals have been developed in collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and The Pensions Regulator (TPR). The staging principles focus on achieving the widest coverage of pensions as soon as possible, while considering industry, regulatory and PDP deliverability.

The proposals aim to balance the competing demands of pace and deliverability: consumers want access to their pension information as quickly as possible, while pension providers need sufficient time to prepare to connect to the ecosystem and PDP needs to test and refine the systems. Based on the PDP’s analysis of the evidence in line with the staging principles, it is recommending that staging should comprise of three waves:

• wave one: largest schemes (1000+ memberships) • wave two: medium schemes (100 to 999 memberships) • wave three: small and micro schemes (99 or less memberships)

Memberships refers to the total number of the pension provider’s members (active, deferred and pensioner).

Wave one would start in April 2023 and would run for up to two years. In this wave, the PDP recommends three distinct cohorts:

1. cohort one: master trusts and FCA regulated providers of personal pensions, starting Spring 2023
2. cohort two: defined contribution (DC) schemes used for Automatic Enrolment (AE), during 2023
3. cohort three: all remaining occupational schemes with 1,000+ memberships (in order of size) with the largest defined benefit (DB) schemes to onboard in 2023

The PDP will run two separate webinars on 8 and 9 June, to provide support and information to data providers around staging to pensions dashboards. Programme representatives will provide an overview of the digital architecture and explain the policy around staging. Register for the webinars via the links below:

8 June – Digital architecture overview: webinar registration 9 June – Staging and policy: webinar registration

To further support data providers with fully assessing the impact of the proposals and in preparing to connect to the ecosystem, the PDP has also created an information hub. This will include a breakdown of the steps data providers need to take to connect, plus an overview of how the ecosystem will work.

This new information is the next step in providing the industry with a one-stop shop for information on getting dashboard ready.

The call for input on staging will be open for responses from 27 May until 9 July.

Chris Curry, Principal of the Pensions Dashboards Programme at the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), said:

“We are grateful to our delivery partners and colleagues across the pensions industry that have fed into the development of our staging recommendations, providing evidence and insight to shape these proposals. Now we want to hear from the rest of our stakeholders. This is a concrete opportunity to shape the proposals at an early stage, which will feed into the formal DWP consultation later this year.

“The PDP is reliant on the understanding and cooperation of our colleagues across the industry. We would urge you to respond to the Call for input, to have your say on the proposals and shape the next steps towards making dashboards happen.

“We have heard the voices across industry calling for more detail on how to prepare for dashboards. The Data providers hub, together with the programme timeline published earlier this month, will answer many of the questions that have been raised to date. “

Guy Opperman, Minister for Pensions, commented:

“Making dashboards available to people at the earliest opportunity is a key part of our strategy to get people more informed about and involved with their pensions savings. So I would encourage anyone with an interest in dashboards to feed in their views on the programme’s emerging proposals for how and when we bring pension schemes on board from 2023.”

Keep up to date with programme updates and future call for inputs by signing up to receive the monthly Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) newsletter, and following PDP on Twitter and LinkedIn.