Pensions Minister calls for pensions dashboard within two years
11 March 2015
Pensions minister Steve Webb has called on the next government to implement a combined state and private pension statement within the next two years that also incorporates aspects of pot-follows-member.
According to a Financial Times article, speaking at the Ceridian Customer Conference 2015, the minister called for a system similar to the 'pensions dashboard' proposed by the Financial Conduct Authority in its retirement income market study late last year. The dashboard would allow members to view their state, company and private pension benefits in one place.
“Already this year we’re digitising the national insurance records so that you’ll be able to go to a website, see what national insurance you’ve paid… and see what that’ll do to your state pension,” said the minister.
“We already, on a paper-based system, contact 2m workers with company pensions to tell them their state and company pension in one place.”
The proposed system could also draw on databases being built for pot-follows-member, he said, allowing for a consolidated statement of pension benefits. But Ros Altmann, the government's older workers' champion, was doubtful a system would be implemented in two years.
“It is a massive task. It’s something that should happen and could happen in the long term,” she said.
Altmann added that the main obstacles to such a system were the continued prevalence of defined benefit – where calculating pensions is more complex than with DC – and the simplification of the state pension.