Due to my being a “devil” on a conference on innovation , I wasn’t able to attend the pension dashboard forum on May 1st and I’m grateful that they have shared the slides of the day with me as if I had.
The line up made sense as do the presentations. It is now for the pension dashboards to be launched without further ado and when I say “dashboards” I mean dashboards plural. We have left behind the nonsense of giving MaPS some monopoly long ago.
This diagram of the “dashboards ecosystem” is brought to us by the ever-ebullient Richard Smith and shows MoneyHelper/MaPS as one of many both as a regulator , as an architect and as a technology enabler. The Government facilitates but is not monopolising the provision of information.
As I understand it, these dashboards will allow consumers to find their pots and pensions, see them in one place and then decide what to do with the information in front of them, There may be commercial advantage to L&G or Just of Standard Life, for this consideration happening on their dashboard, but the FCA rules make it clear that providers will not be able to seal club consumers as they did in the bad old days of annuity provision when all the punter saw was the rate offered by one provider.
Credit the consumer
There is a lot of talk this week about the consumer needing to be better supported when viewing the information supplied by the dashboards.
The “Sector” turns out to be the Society of Pension Consultants who suggest that we will need their help in providing guidance to people who have the information presented to them on a dashboard of their choice.
The SPP’s consultation response stated it is “essential” dashboards “have the ability to fully support consumers in their decision making to enable them to achieve better outcomes”.
As such, the organisation stated the choices proposed “must be expanded at the outset or be expanded within a relatively short period of time, to ensure that this is achievable”.
It said if the information presented to consumers is limited, “there is a risk to the success of dashboards”.
The SPP added it “strongly supports the ambition to deliver a pension dashboard”.
The SPP present a picture of people getting frustrated when they see the information about their pensions and don’t have guidance from professionals about what to do with it.
The FCA are making it clear that the dashboards are not to provide guidance but are to remain factual and non-coercive. I support the FCA and am against the creation of dashboard-bias where dashboards are differentiated for their views as if they were newspapers. I do not want the views of L&G , Standard Life or even MoneyHub, I want to see my state pension alongside my private pension pots so I can consider my retirement income on my own.
I think most people are the same. We pay money to view websites like Spotify without the adverts and we will value dashboards the more for their not promoting the wisdom of their providers, It is enough that they have brought the information to us – thanks very much!
And just as we want to be left alone, we want to get on with doing the things we know we have to do, organise ourselves in readiness of or in retirement.
The capacity to download a PDF of the information assembled for us by the dashboard should be enough. The capacity to print out our pension information on a couple of pieces of paper and converse with experts in the knowledge of “what we’ve got” is all that we ask the dashboards to do for us.
We are generally capable of taking next steps and making further inquiries , based on simple links to the providers of the services we have paid for though our saving.
Building second levels of guidance into the pension dashboards is like cluttering up a room with furniture, it sounds useful but quickly makes for an over busy and dis-satisfying use of space.
Let’s hope that the FCA – MaPS – the PDP and DWP ignore special pleading of the SPC and give people some space in the room. Most of all, I hope the pension dashboards program will get on with getting dashboards over the line.
