Richard Smith is angry. He has five pension pots but he has no idea what income he will get when from 2027 there’s a default pension he will be able to draw. That is apart from Scottish Widow’s explanation that he can expect £500 pa from the £6,290 he’s saved in the pot.
To make life a little easier for those who read this blog, I’ll save you the quotes. You can download a PDF here
With Standard Life he has £1,193, he’s no idea what income he’s going to get from less than £2k
From Nest he’ll get a pot of £249,005 but there’s no idea what kind of income he’ll get, no idea of when and no idea how his pension will keep up with inflation (nice birds though- just like the ones on the TV adverts.
Then there’s another £236, 500.46 (important those pence), that’s with Aviva but he’s no idea about that as income either.
Finally , Richard has £89, 604.34 in his pot withing the Aon Master trust.
I think most people want to know their pension as an income (they don’t know about the cost of an increasing pension – but they will).
They will want to know what happens if they die – will their family continue to get all , some or none of their pension.
For the mast majority of people, tax is down the line, the nature of the guarantees is down the line and flexibility in terms of taking capital is secondary to the starting point , which is what income they will get from their pension.
Of course Richard is fed up, he wants to be able to know what income he will get at what he considers his retirement date and for that to be consistent across his pots.
Richard of course knows he will be able to see something like that as soon as the dashboard is available, But in the meantime he has done his own dashboard with the dashboard he’s posted on linked in and I’ve posted here.
It is not doing any such thing for him! Nest, Standard life, Aviva and Aon Trust have made no attempt to convert his pot into income , giving him only a pot and leaving the rest to him and anyone he employs to explain what he’s getting.
People do not want it to be hard to see the pension. Most of us have learned how to get our state pension. I dug one out from a few years back. 
Here’s how it’s been updated to Jan 8th 2025
That’s all I want from my private pensions for starters. Sure I want to find out what happens if I delay taking it and I want to know what my partner gets, but this is the starter.
I want things to be easy and like Richard I only get things simple on my state pension statement (which took me less than a minute to access – including unlocking the data).