Pensions Dashboard prototype delivers on its promises
04 April 2017
The cross-industry project to design a prototype system, which should one day allow people to see all of their pension savings and entitlements in an online place of their choosing, has been delivered on time and demonstrated to government Ministers.
The Pensions Dashboard prototype project, managed by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) on behalf of HM Treasury, has co-ordinated the efforts of around 80 people from seventeen pension firms and six technology companies, with input from government, regulators and independent industry experts.
Together they have designed and developed the behind-the-scenes technology which could eventually allow people to find all of the pension savings belonging to them among over 60 million different pension pots, administered by thousands of different schemes and pension providers. The Department for Work and Pensions has also provided resources to enable the State Pension to be incorporated in dashboards in the future.
The government’s objective is for the service to be available to consumers by 2019, and for it to be offered by a range of different providers rather than by a single, central service.
Yvonne Braun, ABI Director of Long-term Savings and Protection Policy, said: “It sounds obvious that in 2017 everyone should have easy online access to all their pension information in one single place of their choice – yet the practicalities of making that happen are very complex. The prototype demonstrates once and for all that the technological hurdles can be overcome. Giving people access to clear information about all their pensions has the potential to revolutionise how they think about saving for their retirement…”
HM Treasury is hosting a TechSprint event on April 12th and 13th in conjunction with the ABI and Aviva. Developers and pension experts from over 20 leading technology firms will compete over 24 hours to develop and show-off examples of the potential applications the prototype dashboard system can unlock for consumers.
For anyone interested in finding out more about how the Pensions Dashboard will work, the ABI has a Q&A on their website along with additional useful information.