The average pension app is a decade behind the average banking app. Until that changes, engagement is structurally impossible, argues PensionPay’s Archie Pritchett.

Open a workplace pension app on a Monday morning – if you even have one – and in 30 seconds you can see a balance updated several weeks ago, a projection figure with no explanation attached, and a ‘change contributions’ page that ends with the words “please contact your employer”.

Open a banking app, and in 30 seconds you can check your balance to the penny, see where last weekend’s money went, freeze and unfreeze a card, and round up the next coffee into a savings pot.

While consumer finance spent a decade rebuilding around the user, the pensions industry deferred its own user experience (UX) transformation behind the more visible work of policy reform. The result is a digital experience so far below expectation that no communications strategy, no dashboard rollout, and no Value for Money (VfM) framework will close the engagement gap until the interface itself catches up.

Every industry intervention – the engagement campaign, the annual benefit statement, the pensions dashboard – assumes a returning member who is, statistically, not there. The reality is that 16% of master trust members regularly log into their online account, according to LCP research. The remaining five out of six never come back.

Why meeting expectations matters
What happens when they do log in compounds the problem. I was auto-enrolled at 18, and the first time I opened my pension portal I could not change my contribution rate without calling my employer’s payroll team.

That is not an edge case. Many portals still cannot allow a contribution change without a phone call to payroll, or even show their members a live balance. Nest’s own research found that new members are far more likely to set up nominated beneficiaries via an app than a desktop portal.

When the interface matches expectation, the action happens. When it does not, the member leaves.

The industry’s reflex answer is that pensions are different. They are regulated, illiquid, long-term, and complex. All of that is true, but none of it is an excuse.

Retail banking is also strictly regulated and highly complex, yet Monzo still lets a user freeze a card in two taps. The National Audit Office’s 2024 review of the Pensions Dashboards Programme found that the core infrastructure failed 12 of 14 service standard categories set by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), with capacity and skills gaps cited as the cause.

That is the language of a problem the industry has not yet committed to solving, not the language of a constraint problem.

What does ‘good’ look like?
What good looks like is quite straightforward. By 2028, when the first VfM assessments are required, every workplace defined contribution scheme should be able to deliver the following on a single screen at first login: a real-time account balance, a plain-English projected retirement income, the ability to change contribution rates via the login portal, and a live view of the member’s pensions dashboard.

The VfM framework’s proposed traffic light rating system will include assessments of engagement and customer service.

The vehicle to enforce this already exists. The VfM framework’s traffic-light rating (dark green, light green, amber, red) was built to make member outcomes visible to those who select pension providers. Schemes that fail the four-capability test could default to amber, regardless of investment performance or charge level.

The DWP’s engagement research consistently shows that members who actively review their pot are more likely to know their contribution level and consider whether it is enough.

The industry has earned the right to be proud of much of what it has built over the last decade. Auto-enrolment could easily be the most successful intervention in the history of UK financial services. Targeted support went live in April 2026, giving firms the ability to offer members personalised suggestions for the first time – a significant step.

But that permission is only as useful as the interface it runs through. The pensions sector is not behind banking because pensions are harder. It is behind because the industry has not yet accepted that the saver is the customer.

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