PDP principal, Chris Curry, looks back on the progress made in delivering pensions dashboards in the UK, and the key lessons learnt from the European experience

It’s been four months since the connection to pensions dashboards in line with UK government guidance began, and there has already been fantastic progress. Many millions of personal and workplace pension records have been connected, along with millions more state pension records. We’re now preparing for the start of consumer testing with the state-provided MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard.

As we continue to make steady progress towards delivering dashboards, let me give you an update on the latest developments, as well as a look at some of the lessons we’ve drawn from across Europe.

40 million pension records connected

The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has been working closely with a cohort of industry participants who are directly connecting to the pensions dashboards ecosystem – enabling pensions data to be viewable on a dashboard. Of this group, 13 have completed connection, including the state pension. In total, 19 have passed the important stage of integration testing, and the remainder are moving through the journey.

At the same time, hundreds of pension providers and schemes that are connecting through a third party in line with government guidance have also completed connections. Back in July, the Minister for Pensions announced that 20 million pension records were connected to the ecosystem. Just a couple of months later, I’m pleased to confirm this has more than doubled to over 40 million personal and workplace pension records, in addition to 10s of millions of state pension records.

We’re now looking ahead to consumer testing with the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard, being developed by the Money and Pensions Service. Starting with industry experts to validate data accuracy, we’ll move into phase one, involving targeted testing with a small number of users. Phase two will gradually scale up to volumes of 20,000 users.

Learning from European dashboards

Our approach has been one of constant research, testing and learning. As part of this, we’ve looked to the experiences of other countries that have successfully implemented pensions dashboards, particularly in Europe. I would say there are three important lessons we’ve taken away.

Firstly, if you look at some of the European examples, they do not view the dashboard, once launched, as a final product. Instead, they look to continually refine and update the service, responding to feedback on users’ experiences. In the UK, private sector dashboards will create opportunities for innovation, and they will enable industry and government to learn from how people are using the service, and make recommendations on where to take it in future.

The second lesson is collaboration with industry. European dashboards have involved the industry in different ways, but have always given pension providers and schemes a significant role. For example, Sweden’s dashboard emerged from a collaboration between its government and insurance industry. From its earliest days, PDP has adopted a collaborative attitude with industry that involves engagement and listening. Our progress to date owes much to the cooperative spirit they have shown.

Finally, we have learnt that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will not work for dashboards. Each country has a distinct pensions system and relationship between government and industry, and the UK is no different. Our pensions landscape involves 10s of thousands of providers and schemes with multiple pension types, unlike in other nations. So, we’ve needed to work towards dashboards in a way that best fits our needs.

There is still some way to go, but I’m excited about where we are today.

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