Watch the video and take pleasure in the thought that a properly functioning pension dashboard could be created in seconds on a tool in your pocket as early as the year after next.
After years of faffing about – avoiding the real issues (data and connectivity), we are finally getting to a point where the operational questions of identity, data standards and data quality are being addressed.
Ros Altmann takes an alternative view on linked in
I disagree with Ros. The Pensions Dashboard Program is making solid if unremarkable progress. The time for stamping feet was three years ago, when the project regressed and was nearly aborted.
That said, this functionality, agreed on in 2017 , should have been in place by now and that we are two years away from initial delivery is a shame.
I launched a business with a view to running a pensions dashboard in 2021 and it is a shame that – despite testing one in the FCA innovation sandbox, I won’t be able to provide independent guidance on pension options for some time to come.
But that doesn’t make the prize less! The prize of being able to see all your pensions and your retirement saving in one place, to be able to assess your progress to your goals and do something to achieve them is still out there!
I believe the dashboards will encourage people to invest more, invest more responsibly, combine pension pots and choose how they want their money paid to them in retirement with more precision.
Sure, we need to get to the data and we need pension schemes to open up as banks opened up – so that data can be made readily available at a swipe. But that is not so hard – it has happened before and with the help of people in the great workplace pensions and SIPPs in the UK, it can happen again.
So my message to the doubters is to stop doubting and start doing
- clean up your data
- get an API layer to your database
- speak with Chris Curry and his team at the Pensions Dashboard Program
- respond to PDP consultations.
We can and will do better than we’ve done in the last five years. We cannot let another five years go by without delivering on the promises made in 2016!
Pubs are opening – so must pensions!
