Providers must now focus on operational readiness, data quality and service resilience ahead of the pensions dashboard rollout, according to insurtech company Lumera.
With four months until rollout, the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard ecosystem now has more than 70 million connected pension records.
The MHPD looks to represent a significant step forward in retirement planning for consumers, providing a standardised view of pension benefits across workplace, personal and state pension entitlements.
For providers, however, Lumera claims that the challenge extends well beyond the initial connection to the centralised online portal of the dashboard, which will finally go live in 2027 after years of government planning.
Over the next four months, Lumera expressed that providers should focus on testing the resilience of their dashboards infrastructure, validating data quality and ensuring operational processes are capable of handling increased member engagement and servicing demands.
Reliable connections, timely responses and accurate data will also be essential to building trust in the dashboards experience from day one, and to enable trustees, scheme managers and pension providers to remain compliant with dashboards legislation once they are connected.
Maurice Titley, commercial director for data and dashboards at Lumera, says: “With just four months until the final connection deadline and a launch date that could be as early as this time next year, attention must now turn to operational readiness for providers.
“Connecting to the dashboards ecosystem is only the first step. Firms should be using this period to test processes, strengthen data quality and ensure they can consistently deliver accurate and timely responses once dashboard usage begins to scale.”
Scottish Widows is also launching a tool within its app, designed to help people to track down ‘lost pension pots’ from former employers and, if they choose to do so, merge separate pension plans.