The question that Nest Customers like me are asking is why we seem no nearer an announcement of when we’ll all get access to the pensions dashboard as an accurate statement of our retirement finance from pensions.
I suspect that despite being funded by the tax payer via a DWP soft loan , Nest is admitting it cannot wait any longer and will be fulfilling its duty to provide good pensions by offering a “find my pension” service.
While this new service looks commercially sound (bringing small pots to the notice of its customers who may consider consolidating to Nest), it is something that the Pensions Dashboard will be doing.
My experience of Nest’s commitment to the Pensions Dashboard has been mixed. I am one of 14m people who use Nest most of whom have such small pots that they won’t pay much by way of pension but will default to a flex and fix lifetime income. I like them being at the front of the Guided Retirement queue. But I discover that the amount quoted on my trial view of Pensions Dashboard is so far from the amount quoted on my “Nest dashboard” to make me think that they are still some way from providing a proper contribution to the Pensions Dashboard. I’m prepared to forgive them but suspect that their technology linking the Nest Dashboard to the Pensions Dashboard is proving rather hard.
But this is different, this looks to me like Nest pointing out that one in four (3.5m of us) have lost pots. Is it any surprise that the nation has lost trust in the pension system if its Government owned workplace pension cannot do something about this? They can, though they have to partner with Pensions Lab to do so.
I went on my dashboard to navigate to the advertised new service. I found it easily enough.
I found an introduction that made sense as an introduction to Pension Lab
But this looks a long way from the pensions dashboard you’re making your way to once you’ve verified your details and consented for Nest to give your details to the fintech Pensions Lab.
Here are the firms who’ve signed up to help Pensions Lab, your pensions may be on this list but there are only 11 providers here and what they’re offering is pension pots not pensions.
More than a third of those who have signed up are owned by Standard Life and though the mighty People’s and L&G are there , Smart and WTW and Scottish Widows and several others aren’t. You have to give details of your history of employers to find out what you’ve got.
This is as far as I can navigate because I am nearly 65 years old and have had 13 employers since 1979 when I had my first job. Isn’t this the labour that the Pensions Dashboard was supposed to cut out?
I don’t have anything against Nest adding this service but I don’t think it’s going to restore trust in pensions. For many people , the Pensions Dashboard should do that but will we ever get it?
Nest’s launch of what its calling its pension dashboard is an admission that the dashboard is some way away. It is Pension Lab’s dashboard dressed up in Nest’s robes but it’s really another firm that’s doing the work.
Scott Phillips and his team at Pensions Lab are good news all round but I am mystified why Nest with 14 million mouths to feed can’t do this work themselves. We live in an age of AI, when will artificial intelligence be up to finding us our pension pots?