Commenting as The Pensions Regulator (TPR) publishes new pensions dashboards guidance and launches its dashboards ‘Deadline’ campaign today, Paul Waters, Head of Digital Wealth, Hymans Robertson, says:

“Pensions dashboards have been a long time coming. Many in the industry have been working hard to design and agree the rules and processes needed to make dashboards a reality. So, it is a welcome to have a milestone of ‘12 months to go’ until the first schemes make their data available for members to access through dashboards.

“We need to ensure we move effectively through to this new world where, as Guy Opperman says, all people can have ‘clear pension information at a touch of a button’.

“For too long progress in delivering pensions dashboards has been measured by internal industry developments and announcements. Instead, it will be good to be able to start measuring the success and progress of dashboards by the number of people whose retirement planning has become easier, and outcomes better.

“The programme of work on dashboards has strong parallels with the introduction of auto enrolment. There is a huge amount of work for the industry to do in a short amount of time, in an environment where final rules and guidance are not in place and will evolve in the coming months. This presents a significant challenge to trustees, employers, administrators and those around them. The starting pistol has been fired today and it’s up to pension schemes to ensure that everything is in place for their members to successfully access their data, for the benefit of everyone. Dashboards will only deliver the results needed when an individual can confidently access information on all of their pension schemes, not just those schemes that have prepared diligently to share accurate data.

“But just like auto-enrolment, once in place this will be a catalyst for better retirement outcomes for millions of UK pension savers. Retirement saving has for too long lagged behind the digital experience people receive from other areas of financial services, facilitated from the introduction of Open Banking and the ecosystem of apps that has developed around that. We look forward to a world where this is different. Dashboards providing ready access to clear and consistent pension scheme information can help the industry deliver this innovation, facilitating, the much needed, digital guidance to close the advice gap and deliver better retirement outcomes for everyone.”