Pensions Dashboards – a chance to give savers hope
Pardon the Interruption
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Whether the term “pensions dashboard” leaves you cold or excites you can depend on your background.
Admin is really hard
I come from a pensions administration and management background, starting in the 1980s. So, just like many readers of this, I know that running a pension scheme is really, really hard. And I mean tough.
Decades of overlayered legislative developments and court rulings, sponsoring employer changes, HR, payroll and other supply side churn, and just the sheer complexity of members’ personal lives, all combine to make keeping your head above water as a pensions administrator a daily challenge.
I always say that pensions admin is like bereavement: unless you’re personally in it, from outside it’s almost impossible to appreciate how hard it is.
This was perhaps reflected in Professional Pensions’ survey a year ago asking industry participants to describe the pensions world in just one word – the resulting word cloud was decidedly gloomy.
Fearful
Consequently, many trustees and administrators have a long list of fears about the new pensions dashboards requirements being layered upon them from 2023.
For example, pensions can only be found and displayed on dashboards if personal data is accurate and matches correctly. But as the PASA Data Matching Convention (DMC) Guidance makes clear, it is employers (through their payroll data feeds) and, once they have left employment, deferred members themselves who are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of personal data held by pension schemes.
This Matching challenge (Issue M in the PLSA A-Z Guide to Dashboards) is just one of many issues that trustees and administrators are concerned about.
People are fearful too
Meanwhile, most people (I prefer this inclusive term over “consumers”, “savers”, “members”, “customers”) are feeling pretty fearful about their retirement prospects.
The recently announced ABI / PLSA Engagement Season reminded us that 80% of the working age population, or 30 million people, aren’t sure if they’re on track for retirement, or what that even means.
As pensions professionals, shouldn’t we be hanging our heads in shame at that statistic?
Hope
So where is some hope to be found?
I think it could be in the very dashboards which are causing schemes so much fear.
Moneyhub, one of the alpha dashboard participants in the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP), has launched an alpha dashboard sandbox showing what a dashboard could potentially look like.
This very early iteration of the Moneyhub dashboard was first demonstrated at a PLSA webinar last month, with one audience member feeding back:
"The demonstration was excellent and if this is how a member will see their different pensions, it will be very clear for them to understand."
Just imagine how such dashboards could start to reduce the fear of 30 million people!
Collaborating
Moneyhub and the other alpha participants are collaborating closely together with PDP right now to make dashboards a reality.
This work will lead, over the summer and into the autumn, to much more help and support for industry. Yes, there will be burdens to be borne, but the prize, in terms of people’s later life confidence, is huge.
And it gets to the heart of what mallowstreet is all about: A Better Retirement for Everyone.
