The pressure is now on for pension providers after the government published its connection timetable for the pensions dashboard.
Connection to the long awaited dashboards will start from early 2025.
An update from the DWP on Monday (March 25) set out a staged timetable for occupational pension schemes and personal and stakeholder providers to be connected to what it called the pensions dashboard ecosystem.
Spearheaded by the Department for Work and Pensions, it will allow people to see all their pension information, in one place for free.
All 3,000 schemes will be legally required to be connected to the dashboard system by October 31, 2026 at the latest.
In a statement, pensions minister Paul Maynard, said following a reset in early 2023 “significant progress” has been made on building and testing the system and direct connections will start this August, including the state pension. All being well, it should be ready for wider industry connection from early 2025.
And all large schemes are expected to be connected by the end of November 2025, while medium schemes are expected to connect across 2026 with the final deadline of September 20, 2026.
He added: “The government is absolutely committed to delivering pensions dashboards safely and securely to the public at the earliest opportunity.
“The publication of the connection timetable marks a significant milestone towards launching pensions dashboards, and takes us closer to introducing a service that has the potential to transform how individuals plan for retirement.”
Chris Curry, principal of the Pensions Dashboards Programme, said it continues to work closely with the industry as it prepares for the first providers to start connecting.
Curry said: “Pensions dashboards will be a crucial tool to support retirement planning.
“Delivering dashboards is complex, and I’m continually grateful for the spirit of cooperation across government, regulators and industry.
“The timetable for connection is an important step on the journey to making dashboards a reality.”
The first, largest schemes are expected to connect to the dashboard by April 30, 2025 with deadlines for further schemes following monthly throughout the year.
Pressure on for providers
Anthony Rafferty, CEO of Origo, said the announcement emphasises how important it is for pension providers to have their data preparation underway.
He said: “The industry is predicted to receive millions of requests for pensions data when dashboards are fully live. Providers therefore need to be ‘dashboard ready’, with a robust and scalable service which can securely and compliantly handle their pension dashboard processing requirements.
“All of which must be in place in enough time to connect to the central digital architecture, to ensure a smooth, well tested process ahead of their deadline.
“Once pensions are found, the scale challenge for industry is to also handle the volume of view requests they receive. We predict a pension provider with a million customers could receive 200,000 view requests per day as people view their pension data more often."
Jonathan Hawkins, proposition Lead at Bravura, said the pressure is now on but welcomed the announcement.
