What will pension dashboards mean for members, providers – and employers?

Pension dashboards are edging ever closer to becoming a reality, although the exact go‑live date is unconfirmed. The research phase is underway, and encouragingly, some industry participants have already begun testing early versions in an unmistakable sign of progress.

Momentum is also building around the potential for commercial dashboards which will follow on from the government one, with industry groups re‑engaging, gauging appetite, and exploring the various delivery models.

Despite the positive momentum, uncertainty remains around how people will respond once dashboards are made available.
 

How will member behaviour change?

Will consumers embrace them enthusiastically, and could a sudden surge in activity put unexpected pressure on pension administrators and workplace schemes whose members want to ask questions when they see all their pension pots together in one place for the first time?

These questions have yet to be answered, but the ongoing research should offer valuable insights into likely behaviour.
 

Lessons from Europe’s dashboards

Looking at other countries’ dashboard programmes in Europe (including Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) gives us a glimpse of the big difference they can make. And during the long period between the initial concept and the eventual delivery of UK pension dashboards, the market itself has evolved dramatically.

Auto‑enrolment has brought millions more savers into the system, and we’ve seen the rapid rise of online financial “dashboards” that allow individuals to view all their finances in one place.

These tools, powered by open banking and third‑party technology, are already familiar to many consumers. At Scottish Widows, over 50,000 pension scheme members have connected other financial accounts to their pension scheme, effectively creating their own DC‑focused dashboard. Others have linked their bank and ISA accounts to build a more rounded financial view.

But brilliant as these tools are, they have clear limitations: they can’t easily incorporate the State Pension, Defined Benefit schemes, or many own‑trust arrangements. The result is an incomplete picture – one that the pension dashboards programme is designed to fix.

We’ve also seen strong growth in private pension‑finding services as fintech solutions integrate with provider platforms to help members find and consolidate lost pensions. Yet even these services fall short of offering a truly holistic pension picture, particularly for people with a mix of defined benefit, state pension and DC pots.

This is where pension dashboards will make a real difference. When it comes to engaging with their pensions and retirement planning, they will help people answer three crucial questions:

• What have I got
• Is it enough
• What can I do next.

They’ll make answering that first “what have I got?” question super simple.  They could also bring an open banking type experience to give a broader financial view so that people can see all their finances in one place, ever closer.  Pension dashboards are a key enabler here.

There are some risks to consider, and things have changed quite dramatically since the Pension Dashboard Programme kicked off some years ago.

None of us had heard of generative or agentic AI back then and now we can all see the potential for agentic AI tools to read a dashboard and initiate action right down to consolidating pensions, quickly and easily. This carries both risks and opportunities and has the potential to disrupt the goals of the dashboard programme.

It will take time before we fully understand how transformational pension dashboards might be for improving UK savers’ financial wellbeing, and whether they can help close the pension adequacy gap, with many still saving too little for even basic retirement needs.

But they are likely to play a major role by giving people clear visibility of what they’ve saved, and by translating different types of pension benefits into a single expected income figure.

My hope is that the programme moves swiftly through the testing phase so dashboards can get into the hands of real consumers as soon as possible. And once they do, I hope people quickly uncover significant lost pots – creating early excitement and demonstrating the power of the system.

Open banking could never locate lost bank accounts and in this way the Pension Dashboard programme is very different – it could deliver some real positive stories. According to the PPI, more than £30 billion in pension savings are currently considered “lost”. Dashboards have the potential to reunite millions of people with pensions they’d forgotten (or never knew) they had.*

If they achieve that, dashboards have the opportunity to surprise and delight millions of people and boost engagement to unprecedented levels.

And that’s the pension story we’d all like to see.

We still have at least a few months more to wait. With the final scheme connection deadline set for October 2026, the government dashboard go‑live date will be set separately, giving schemes at least six months’ notice after industry consultation before it is made available to the public.**

That makes good sense. It gives schemes and providers time to ensure readiness to meet their statutory duties, as well as data quality, operational processes, all-important customer communications, and integration testing.  

The key driver in getting pension dashboards ‘delivered’ seems to be the breadth of customer testing and the results achieved, so we wait with bated breath to hear from the programme.

Sources

*Lost pension pots Brits missing £31.1bn in unclaimed pension pots | Pensions UK

**https://pensionssharedservice.org.uk/news/the-pensions-dashboards-programme-pdp/