The specific launch date of the pensions dashboard will depend on the success of user testing with the public, Chris Curry, principal of the Pensions Dashboard Programme told delegates at the Corporate Adviser
Master Trust conference in London this week.
Refusing to be drawn on a date, he added: “I don’t think anyone could really say with their hand on their heart when they think that the dashboard service is likely to be made publicly available, because we don’t know when it’s going to be good enough.”
He also described the government decision to separate the launch of the Money Helper dashboard from commercial dashboards as a public safety valve that did not indicate any lack of support for the
commercial versions.
He added: “I want to make clear is that this is not about not wanting commercial dashboards, there not being a future for commercial dashboards, or wanting to put them back a long way into the future.
“This is about making sure that when dashboards are delivered and first available to the public, that we have a public safety valve, that we are able to look at how well they’re working, that we can do it in a more controlled environment, that we can provide the members of the public who are using pensions dashboards with a good service, which we can monitor and then improve over time.”
He said that the PDP spends a lot of time talking to the industry about readiness, regulation, data and technical connections but it is how dashboards work for the public that is most important.
He added: “We need to keep reminding ourselves why it is that we’re doing this – to help people understand their pensions and to find pensions they may not know they have. So user testing is a really important part of what we do on the program, as well as all the work that we’re doing with the industry. We are working very hard to make this a reality, but we’re doing it in a way to make sure it works properly.”
He added that the only actual date in legislation is the deadline for pension providers and those schemes in scope of the regulation to connect to dashboard infrastructure.
“That date is the 31st October 2026. There are just over 3000 schemes in scope of the regulations. They all need to be connected by that date. However, we’re not expecting them all to turn up a couple of weeks beforehand, saying we think it’s about time we connected. So what can we do? So we’ve been working very hard with our delivery partners, on the program.”
Meanwhile in a presentation on emerging AI technology, Matt Gosden, co-founder and CEO of Engage Smarter urged pension companies to get to grips with AI, as their customers will already be starting to use this technology elsewhere.
Gosden says consumers are already asking large language AI models like Chat GPT pensions questions. But he said tools and applications developed by pension companies have the capacity to deliver more targeted, and ultimately more accurate answers by ensuring answers utilise the company’s own calculators, tools and content.
Gosden says there was real potential for AI to transform the pensions industry, delivering better outcomes for both member and businesses. But he said it was important that companies developing various tools and applications utilised safety features, for example embedding guardrails into the AI architecture. This could ensure which information is properly fact-checked and only sourced from data or calculators that the company is confident are accurate. It can also ensure that there are ‘scope’ guardrails – for example is this the kind of question that with the pension company operating this model is happy answering.
