Limited resources and historic data gaps could leave smaller schemes facing disproportionate operational pressures, all as trustees are urged to address data weaknesses ahead of public availability of the pensions dashboard, according to research by Lumera.
The insurance technology firm claimed that schemes can face disproportionate pressures compared with their larger counterparts, and are often lacking dedicated project teams, specialist data functions, and administration capacity, despite all needing to meet the same requirements once connected.
The Pensions Regulator’s pensions dashboards readiness survey has previously reported that 65 per cent of schemes between 600 and 999 relevant members had completed all five key preparation activities for the dashboard. This had been achieved around 11 months before their ‘connect by’ date, compared with 79 per cent of schemes with more than 20,000 members.
The key preparation activities that schemes were asked about were regularly tracking progress at board meetings, discussing preparations with administrators, choosing a route to connection, having digital personal data, and having confidence in the accuracy of this data.
Maurice Titley, commercial director for data and dashboards at Lumera, says: “Small schemes face the double challenge of getting connected with limited resources and then managing the operational demands when pensions dashboards are used at scale by the public, which is expected to start with the launch of the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard in the next financial year.”
“While the priority, understandably, has been to connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem ahead of the 31 October legal deadline, the focus now needs to shift to addressing data weaknesses ahead of public availability.”
Earlier this month, the Pensions Administration Standards Association published guidance on how the industry should respond to member queries about the pension dashboard.
