UK. Pensions dashboard roll-out in 2023 ‘under threat’

The target date of 2023 for the roll-out of the pensions dashboards is under threat from a lack of clarity, the Society of Pension Professionals has warned.

The lack of clarity and complexity of the dashboard roll-out is such that it might be impossible to provide some savers with a “single number” for their benefits.

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James Riley, president, and Paul McGlone, immediate past president, wrote to the Pensions Dashboards Programme detailing a list of seven “priority areas” where SPP members “feel clarity is needed before substantial progress can be made on their contribution to the pensions dashboards”.

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Riley and McGlone said “that unless clarity is provided urgently, then that [implementation] timescale will be under threat”.

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“I think it will be a brave organisation to say today: I promise to onboard in 2022, without actually knowing what they need to build and how to answer the various questions that we’ve posed,” McGlone said.

The seven points cover a range of issues, the lack of clarity on what IT infrastructure schemes need to develop, on legal questions such as who is liable for any failure in dashboard infrastructure, and on how to resolve the issue of “partial matches”, where schemes possess records “similar to, but not an exact match to the member”.

Asked what a more realistic timescale might be for full implementation, McGlone said there is a chance the dashboards may never see “100 per cent compliance”.

 

Read more @FT Adviser

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