ABI pleads ‘don’t kill off vital pensions dashboard’
18 July 2018
Responding to reports that Pensions Secretary Esther McVey was planning to kill off the proposed pensions dashboard, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has insisted the government must honour the promises it made.
The pensions dashboard is a system which would allow savers to view all of their pension savings, including the State Pension, in a single online place of their choosing.
Given the success of auto-enrolment, which has created nine million new workplace savers and that the average worker will change jobs 11 times, the ABI sees the tool as “essential” to help savers keep track of and manage their savings and plan effectively for retirement.
A prototype pensions dashboard was unveiled in March 2017 (and it was only last month that Origo announced it had successfully scale tested for the anticipated usage by 15 million active consumers finding their pensions via a Pensions Dashboard).
The project was funded by the industry and supported by tech firms working on a pro bono basis, with around 80 people contributing to the work.
The ABI has since provided the Government with a blueprint for how to turn it into a real-life service.
Huw Evans, director general of the ABI, said:
“It is vital the government stands by its promises on the pension dashboard. To abandon it would be a huge let down to millions of savers, leaving them unable to find the money they have saved and even exposing them to fraud.
This is an initiative with cross-party support, backed by consumer groups, which is a win-win for everyone.
The pensions industry is committed to helping but we need government involvement to ensure the system works fairly for everyone.”