Working together for the consumer

Darren Philp, Head of Policy at Smart Pension, said: “This is an important consultation. Get the dashboard right and we potentially reunite thousands of people with their lost pensions and make it easier for people to plan for their retirement. Get it wrong and we further erode trust and confidence. “The dashboard has the potential to reconnect people with their pensions. By providing a one-stop shop for viewing pensions, dashboards can help people plan for their retirement, leading to better decision-making and outcomes. It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully this consultation will reignite the dashboard, and move us from talking shop to delivery.”‍

On specific consultation points Philp adds: Rollout “We need full coverage as quickly as possible, but recognise that this is a big ask. We think more modern DC schemes should be able to hook up to the dashboard relatively quickly, as long as we have modern and well documented dashboard architecture. For others it will take more time, but, putting the consumer first, we should aim to have full coverage as soon as possible and certainly within three years.

“We also think that a pensions register could be adopted in the early phase where all schemes have to provide some information about whether or not they hold a pension for an individual from day one. This helps people find their pensions and, while it won’t give people details of their pension, at least they will know they’ve got one and where to go for further information. This also significantly mitigates the risk of people making decisions on the basis of partial information.”

Multiple dashboards

“We very much support a non-commercial dashboard being offered by the Single Financial Guidance Body (SFGB). This will be an important pillar in establishing trust in the dashboard. We see the case for other ‘dashboards’ since a one size fits all approach rarely works and hope that these can come on stream concurrently or soon after the SFGB dashboard goes live.” Pension finder services.

"Although there is debate between multiple and single pension finder services, we think it makes sense to have only one. However, this should be run by the SFGB as it is too important and central to the project to leave to the industry to take forward.” Philp comments as the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) consultation on the pensions dashboard closes on January 28 2019.