The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has today published its ‘dashboard data standards’ document (Data standards guide | | Pensions Dashboards Programme) setting out the information which pension schemes and pension providers will have to supply to pensions dashboards.

In most cases the information is as expected – the dashboard will provide information on pension accrued to date and expected retirement income, plus details of where the pension was built up (eg in which previous employment). The site will also contain links off to scheme websites (where available) which could include information on costs and charges, copies of scheme reports etc.

Some features of the proposed dashboard which emerge from today’s document include:

• The dashboard is for those under state pension age and is for pensions which have not yet been drawn (or ‘crystallised’); this means that those over pension age will not be able to access information even if they have not yet retired, and data on the balance in drawdown accounts will not be shown;
• Data will be presented on different bases for different schemes, side-by-side; for example, Defined Contribution estimates of retirement pots could be based on Statutory Money Purchase Illustration (SMPI) assumptions or in line with FCA projections; DB estimates could be based on pension built up to date or assuming continued service up to retirement; schemes will be free to choose how the present the data;
• Schemes will be able to decide how good a match they will accept in terms of ID verification before supplying data to a dashboard; given that scheme data is often imperfect or incomplete, some schemes may decide that a match on certain variables (eg NI number, date of birth) is good enough, whilst others may insist on a higher level of verification;

According to Steve Webb, partner at LCP, leaving schemes to make their own choices about when a positive match is flagged could lead schemes to be ‘risk-averse’ and only supply data if they are 100% certain of a match, rather than risk inadvertently sending data out to the wrong person.

Commenting, Steve Webb said:

“The new information about the data that will be required to be displayed on dashboards is welcome. But it is surprising to see that schemes will be free to make their own decisions on how close a data match is required before they will send data to a dashboard. Schemes will understandably be very nervous about accidentally revealing pension data to a third party in error. If they have a free hand they will have a strong incentive to be very ‘risk-averse’, only supplying data if they are absolutely certain of a match. This could lead to large numbers of ‘false negatives’ where individuals do have rights in a given scheme but this does not show up on the dashboard because of imperfections in the data. If this happens at scale, this could undermine one of the purposes of the dashboard, namely to help re-unite people with lost pension pots”.