Editor’s Comment: It was all going so well…

It’s not clear what’s gone wrong but it’s a fair bet that the aim of the first test connections to the Dashboard in August were way off target.

The announcements from the DWP and the government’s Money and Pensions Service, which is ultimately responsible for the Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP), were couched in optimistic tones but not a lot of detail.

And sadly, as we all know, optimism is not a substitute for action.

Ms Trott will now be looking at where to go next. She’s promised a new chair of the PDP and a new timetable. The delays may be short or long but it seems unlikely there will be much major progress this year, at least in terms of seeing a realistic example of what a Pensions Dashboard looks like.

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One issue is the insistence of the government in taking the lead and asking private providers to follow. Effectively we have civil servants trying to liaise with private sector pension providers to agree on a set of technical standards to make the dashboards a reality. That’s a tall order.

It’s worth remembering that Pensions Dashboards were announced as far back as 2016 and work began on them in earnest in 2019. The earliest date for implementation of live dashboards was 2024 and that was before the reset button was pressed. Many experts now believe 2026 or 2027 is more realistic but it could be even later.

Given the government’s habit of missing deadlines it seems not unlikely it will take a decade or more from their announcement to bring the dashboards to life.

I’m a supporter of the idea of giving pension savers an all-in-one online hub where they can see the value of their pensions.

Existing pension reports from providers are often abysmal, woefully confusing and go to great ends to avoid making the charges and their impact clear.

Reform is needed but it may be that the Pensions Dashboards are the wrong type of reform. Given the current delays we may well have a new government before any of us can access a working Pensions Dashboard.

Any government, including this one, must be sorely tempted now to quietly ditch the dashboards, perhaps with the excuse that they are a good idea but the cost of making them work is too high.

It may ultimately be easier to get all pension provides to simply supply a templated pension report twice a year to pension savers along with a state pension statement. If people have half a dozen pensions schemes they could easily add up the totals, which is essentially what the Pensions Dashboards are trying to do along with a few bells and whistles. The dashboards may just be making a mountain out of a molehill.

I do not think the DWP is ready to drop Pensions Dashboards just yet but it will be looking at just how much it will cost to finally get them off the ground and it will know that the cost could be enormous.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and has worked as a journalist and editor for over three decades.

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