Image source: UK Parliament CC BY 3.0
The UK Government’s Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP) has been reset with a revised delivery plan, the minister overseeing the effort has said.
Emma Reynold, pensions minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, announced the development in a statement to Parliament yesterday.
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 (MaPS) taking the lead in delivering the architecture and developing the MoneyHelper dashboard for government.
She said the MaPS has recently concluded a formal reset process and generated a new delivery plan.
It has now begun testing the connections for dashboards with a small number of external organisations as a started point for wider industry connections. This is in line with an announcement in March by Reynolds’ predecessor in the role Paul Maynard.
Technical guidance
The PDP has also published an updated draft code of connection, technical standards and data standards to support the pensions industry to prepare for connection.
The reset comes after the National Audit Office published a highly critical report of the programme in May, saying that progress had been undermined by serious capability issues.
Reynolds said the new moves have already encouraged the Infrastructure and Projects Authority to increase its confidence in the programme’s ability to deliver against the plan.
She refrained from stating a launch date for public use of the Government’s dashboard, but said the MaPS will focus its efforts on the connection and launch before turning to work on connecting commercial dashboard services.
Greater choice and access
“The Government supports the principle of enabling multiple commercial pensions dashboard services, which will provide savers with greater choice to access their pensions information from organisations they are familiar with, promoting greater engagement with pensions,” she said.
“However, in the interests of ensuring consumers have the best experience on dashboards, it is prudent to allow a period while only the MoneyHelper dashboard is operational.
“Prioritising the launch of the government backed dashboard in this way will provide an opportunity to obtain better insights into customer behaviour and ensure greater confidence in operational delivery, security, and consumer protection before facilitating the connection of commercial dashboards.”
She added that work on connecting pensions schemes and providers is expected to begin in April 2025 and that the overall connection deadline is 31 October 2026.
In a separate statement, chief executive of MaPs Oliver Morley said: “Pensions dashboards will transform how people view their retirement savings, and will help pension providers and schemes’ engagement with better informed customers and members. Dashboards are a truly collaborative effort between government, industry and regulators. We are working hard together to create a service that puts savers in control of their pensions.”
