The first connections to the national Pensions Dashboard are scheduled to begin in August of this year, a government minister has said.
Minister for Pensions Paul Maynard told Parliament that the process will include connections with the Department for Work and Pensions for the state pension, and will be followed up by testing for wider industry connections beginning early next year.
This follows a reset of the programme last year due to complexities in developing the IT system to support the dashboard.
The programme is aimed at providing a framework for dashboards to give people easy access to information about their various pensions, with the Money and Pensions Service taking the lead in delivering the architecture and developing a dashboard for government.
Maynard said that good progess has been made since the reset, which has made it possible to publish guidance with a staged timetable for connecting the approximately 3,000 pension schemes in scope for connection by a completion deadline of October 2026.
Prioritising connections
“The timetable prioritises connection of the largest pension schemes and providers, so that crucial user testing can quickly take place at scale, with the first cohort expected to have completed connection by the end of April 2025,” he said.
“Whilst the timetable is not mandatory, it is a legal requirement that trustees or managers of occupational pension schemes and providers of personal and stakeholder pensions have regard to this guidance.”
His statement was made as four companies with plans for their own dashboards – Legal & General, Standard Life, Moneyhub and Just Group – announced the launch of the Dashboard Operators Coalition (DOC). They said this is open to other potential operators of commercial dashboards and that will work with the Government to support the delivery of dashboards to consumers as early as possible.
DOC chair and independent dashboard consultant Richard Smith said: “On the supply of data to dashboards, the Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) is working very closely with the Government’s Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP). Now, for the front end consumer experience of dashboards themselves, there needs to be an equivalent industry coalition, where dashboard operators can come together to share their questions, ideas and feedback to develop and maintain best practice for operating dashboards.
“We know from research reports that consumers desperately want to use commercial pensions dashboards, on apps they already use and trust (such as their banking or pension app); and they want to do this as soon as possible. So I’m very grateful to the first four firms for taking the lead with this new coalition.
“I hope other firms will see the benefits of joining the coalition too, as they decide to offer their own dashboards.”
