Richard Smith is at the centre of any conversation about Pensions Dashboard(s).
You don’t have to click through to see the video. The Pensions Dashboard doesn’t answer the kind of questions people should have. It shouldn’t use delusional simplicity.
Five things I didn’t know!
- That I might have to wait up to 10 days for what I thought was online information
- That MaPS are the sole support advertised for those who have a question.
- That you’ll need to contact your provider if it’s not sure you are who you say you are
- That can take your pension as lump sum or regular pension (see video 41 seconds in).
- That I’d need to watch a commercial advert to see a Government video on YouTube!
This screen contains the most contentious points.
Your pension over time. Your pension over time will not change if your “estimated retirement income” is from a DC pot. It will be level income that means each year we get inflation (every year) your income buys less. Your pension in real terms will go down. By comparison a DB pension or a CDC pension will link your income to inflation. The DB pension will in the private sector normally be capped at 5%, in the public sector will be fully inflation linked. Comparing apples with pears if you ask me! The difference is even greater if you consider you DB and CDC pension will offer spouse’s pensions which won’t be built into the projection of you DC pot’s estimate of retirement income.
When can you take your pension? Well you can take your money out of a DC pot from 55, rising to 57 soon. CDC will pay pensions from 55 , rising to 57 soon. The state pension will pay in future 67 and 68 in a few years. But taking your money from a DC pot is not taking a pension. This statement is contentious because right now DC pots do not pay pensions, you have to choose to buy an annuity.
How you take your pension, lump sum or regular income. We have got to stop being so sloppy. Taking a lump sum is not the same as taking a regular income and neither can be called a pension unless the regular income is paid for as long as you live (and preferably your surviving spouse lives). It is time we stopped confusing people about what a pension is. Cashing in a pot is not taking a pension.
First time wording.
For the most part, I am happy with the video which makes sense to everyone. But the “pension” issue has not yet been solved and has been captured by those providing DC who would like us to think that DC , CDC , DB and State Pension can be easily compared.
What happens to your income in retirement differs massively between pensions and cannot be compared by DC providers quoting a level pension and others quoting something quite different.
We aren’t getting a pension when we’re not. With DC we’re getting the freedom of choice which works well if you are a financial adviser or sophisticated and knowledgeable person approaching retirement. But it is not good enough for ordinary people who are going to be confused by what a pension is.
Calling “cashing out” a pot a way of getting a pension is just not right and encourages what is happening the country over. Cashing out is what a pension isn’t.
Let’s please get a second version of the pensions dashboard soon. One that does not confuse ordinary people about what a proper pension is.
Well highlighted Henry.
Clearly there will need to be ongoing upgrades of how “proper pensions” are shown on the dashboard. .
A short term solution may be to provide an equivalent flat rate pension for DB & CDC as a comparator to the pot estimates. E.G. CDC pension £1200pa (equivalent in value to a flat rate pot pension of £2000pa).
Henry, you might find this interesting.
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-price-of-time
Henry, you might find this interesting.
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-price-of-time
The “interesting” piece centres the Dutch DB-to-DC transition (deadline 2028) as emblematic of a broader Western shift draining structural demand for long-dated sovereigns.
While directionally correct for Continental Europe, this misreads the UK trajectory.
• UK DB schemes are not being “decommissioned by statute” in the same way. The UK’s regulatory framework (eg the Pensions Act 2021, strengthened funding code expectations from 2024 onward) has encouraged consolidation and buy-ins/buy-outs, not mass conversion to DC.
Around 40% of private sector DB liabilities are now insured via bulk annuity transactions — a market where insurers increase their appetite for long-dated gilts, not reduce it.
• Insurers are now the dominant long-end buyers, not DB trustees. In 2025, UK life insurers held c.£1.2tn in gilts, up from £850bn in 2020, with duration profiles extending beyond 20 years in many cases.
This offsets modest reduction in direct DB demand.
• Public sector DB remains untouched. The NHS, teachers’, and civil service schemes (totaling c.£2.5tn in liabilities) remain “fully funded” on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no statutory pressure to shorten duration or shift to DC.
Thus, unlike the Netherlands, the UK’s liability-driven investment (LDI) ecosystem has reconfigured, not retreated, preserving structural demand for long gilts.
The article also cites US labour force shrinkage (−720k in one month) and falling participation (61.5%) as evidence of a global “aging income statement”.
While the UK faces similar demographic headwinds, the dynamics differ meaningfully:
• UK labour force participation has been rising among older cohorts.
ONS data (2025) shows 55–64 age group participation at 72.4%, up from 67.1% in 2019, driven by state pension age rises (now 66, moving to 67 by 2028) and more flexible work norms post-pandemic.
• Net migration has offset native cohort shrinkage. Despite political friction, net migration averaged c.400k/year 2021–2025, with 58% of migrants aged 25–44 directly replenishing over time the taxable, consuming, and saving base.
• Productivity, not headcount, is the binding constraint. UK output per hour remains ~15% below G7 average (2024 ONS), implying that even stable labour supply would not guarantee growth without capital deepening or innovation.
Hence, framing the UK’s growth constraint purely as “labour supply rationing” overlooks the more salient UK-specific bottleneck: productivity stagnation, not demographic collapse.
The article further implies a global convergence toward “shortening debts to hide” rollover risk, citing ECB and Fed QT.
Again, the UK’s institutional setup diverges:
• DMO issuance strategy remains explicitly long-dated. The UK Debt Management Office’s 2025–26 Remit confirms target average maturity of new issuance at 12.5 years, with 30- and 50-year gilts still regular features.
Unlike the US Treasury’s recent tilt toward bills, the DMO has lengthened duration since 2022 to lock in yields and reduce refinancing risk.
• Bank of England’s QT is slower and more predictable. The BoE’s gilt runoff is capped at £100bn/year (vs. Fed’s $95bn/month at peak), and its stock of APF-held gilts remains c.£750bn, enough to absorb market volatility without triggering fire-sale dynamics.
• Fiscal credibility anchor remains intact. Despite 2022’s “mini-budget” shock, the OBR’s independence and the government’s adherence to its fiscal rules (debt falling by Year 5 of forecast) have restored investor confidence.
10y gilt yields traded at 4.1% in June 2026, below US 10y (4.3%) and German 10y (2.9% but with negative real yield).
The UK’s “shadow bank” state narrative thus fits less neatly here. The state is not liquidating external savings (it has few), nor impersonating a buyer by decree (BoE QT is rule-based, not discretionary).
The article’s core metaphor is “the price of time: what one generation charges to hold the promises of another”. That may appear elegant but overlooks UK institutional innovations that explicitly price intergenerational transfers:
• Intergenerational reporting: The OBR’s Fiscal Sustainability Report (2025) introduced formal “generational accounts”, showing net tax contributions by cohort.
It found that those born in the 1990s will pay c.£120k more in lifetime taxes than 1960s cohorts, before accounting for state pension delays.
• Triple Lock Plus: The 2024 state pension reform (earnings + 2.5% floor, capped at 3% above inflation) explicitly trades off current pensioner income against future taxpayer burden, a direct “price of time” mechanism absent in most peer jurisdictions.
• CDC schemes: The 2021 Pension Schemes Act enabled CDC allowing risk-sharing across generations within a scheme, effectively offering scope to internalise the “price of time” rather than outsourcing it to the gilt market.
These are not marginal tweaks; they represent a different institutional philosophy to the Eurozone’s market-driven unwind.
“The Price of Time” is a powerful macro-financial narrative, but it is written from a US/EU/JP perspective that implicitly assumes institutional homogeneity.
The UK’s pension consolidation model, migration-adjusted demographics, DMO duration strategy, and explicit intergenerational accounting frameworks mean that the “price of time” is being set differently here: less via market withdrawal, more via fiscal and regulatory design.
For UK policymakers and institutional investors, the real risk is not the Dutch-style DB unwind, but the productivity–pension feedback loop: if output per hour remains stagnant, even a well-funded LDI market cannot sustain real pension growth without raising the “price” paid by younger taxpayers.
That is the UK-specific problem the article misses.
Interesting take on the pension dashboard progress; the semantic debate over ‘pension’ really highlights how user-centered design gets overlooked in financial tech.