Outlook 2025: Dawn of the Dashboards

Two years later, the then-chancellor George Osborne first pledged government support for a pensions dashboard in 2016, promising a “working prototype” by March 2017. 

This has taken longer than anticipated. The first connections to the dashboards “ecosystem” will be made – barring any mishap – by 30 April 2025, when all schemes with at least 20,000 active and deferred members must have connected. 

Meanwhile, countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden have operated pensions dashboards for years – Denmark’s PensionsInfo dashboard recently celebrated 25 years of operations. 

The UK government and its pensions industry, meanwhile, have been working for much of the past decade to make dashboards a reality. 

“As well as connection and data readiness, we are beginning to see trustees giving thought to the wider implications of dashboards connection,” says Oliver Topping, partner at Sackers. 

“That includes risk management. For example, ensuring contracts with administrators and additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) providers give suitable assurances; data protection, including updates to privacy notices and policies; and the availability of trustee protections like insurance and indemnities in the event that things go wrong.” 

Launch date pending

Quite when the general public will actually be able to use the dashboards, however, is another matter.  

In October 2024, pensions minister Emma Reynolds told parliament that there was no confirmed launch date for the public to use dashboards, although the government has directed the Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP) to focus on connecting and launching the MoneyHelper dashboard service, before turning its attentions to commercial dashboards. 

With the launch date yet to be confirmed, Isio’s head of administration Girish Menezes believes that the government needs to take a flexible approach. 

“The ‘go-live’ date should only happen when we’re all good and ready,” he says, even if it means staggering the dashboard rollout. “They should take a slightly flexible view.” 

“Defined benefit schemes are facing some tough hurdles with things like AVCs, guaranteed minimum pensions, and court orders adding extra layers of complexity.”

Lesley Cashell, Trafalgar House

“The real challenge is in how schemes are connecting,” adds Lesley Cashell, a project manager at administrator Trafalgar House. “Defined benefit schemes are facing some tough hurdles with things like AVCs, guaranteed minimum pensions, and court orders adding extra layers of complexity. 

“These issues, which the industry has flagged for some time, need careful attention and more tailored solutions. 

“Defined contribution schemes are generally in good shape and ready to go, but for defined benefit schemes, there’s still a lot of work to be done to get the automation in place for accurate, value-based data – something that’s absolutely essential for the dashboards to work effectively.” 

WTW senior consultant Geraldine Brassett praised the pensions industry for its collaboration throughout the dashboards process. 

“The thing that we really need to see, that we don’t have, is what a front-end dashboard looks like,” she says. 

Delays and frustrations

The dashboards development process has not been without its frustrations. There have been delays and concerns raised about the cost of creating the digital infrastructure. 

“We’ve obviously had formal delays where everything was put on hold for a while,” says Aon partner Paul McGlone. “It was quite frustrating to have pensions ministers constantly saying ‘schemes need to get their data sorted out’, only to find that actually it wasn’t the schemes and their data that was a problem, it was the central architecture that wasn’t fit for purpose.” 

“We have a situation where schemes are paying quite large amounts of money to have their members connected to a system with no clue how long it will be before those members actually get access.”

Paul McGlone, Aon

He adds that, with just a few months to go until the first connection deadlines, the industry was still waiting on finalised data standards from the PDP. 

“We’re all working with a version of data standards – what we think we’ll have to provide – but it’s still draft,” McGlone says.  

“We have a situation where schemes are paying quite large amounts of money to have their members connected to a system with no clue how long it will be before those members actually get access.”

The Department for Work and Pensions set out its deadlines earlier this year for schemes to be ready to connect to the dashboards ecosystem.