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Spotlight Pensions Dashboards: What you really need to know.
The UK pensions landscape is evolving, and pensions dashboards are set to play a major role in improving how savers access and understand their retirement information. While many in the industry are already familiar with the programme, the upcoming deadlines and technical requirements mean it’s more important than ever to stay aligned on what dashboards are, how they work, and what they mean for schemes, administrators, and technology providers. This overview breaks down the essentials and explains how Mantle supports the dashboards ecosystem with accurate, automated pension data.
What are Pensions Dashboards?
Gone are the days when you work for one company your entire working life. Changing roles as you evolve and moving to different businesses are now considered to be two very normal practices in the world of work.
However, in doing so, we can lose track of a crucial part of our employment journey: our pension schemes. Every job you work will have its own pension attached to it that you will pay into but lose track of once you move to your next role. This is where the Money and Pensions Service’s Pensions Dashboard will come in: a new digital service that brings all your pensions together, securely, in one place. As we move forward into a new world of work and pensions, understanding how these new services work will be critical for good personal financial management.
What is the Pensions Dashboard?
The Pensions Dashboard is a UK government scheme to give people access to all the information about their pensions in one online and secure place. At the moment, workers have to approach each of their pension providers individually for information about their pension pots. This information may just be about the current amount saved, not what the worker may receive in the future.
The Pensions Dashboard has been designed to be this one place. Rather than having to explore countless occupational pension schemes and dashboards from third-party pension providers, the Pensions Dashboard will be a unified space for counting all pensions, including State Pensions.
Who will offer Pensions Dashboards?
The main Pensions Dashboard will be created and managed by the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK government. The Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP) is part of the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), and the dashboard accessible by the public will be the MoneyHelper Dashboard.
This is the first dashboard, and it will be the non-commercial dashboard accessible by any UK worker due a pension. Commercial dashboards may launch from other providers at a later date.
When is the deadline or pension providers to connect to the Pensions Dashboard?
The final connection date for pension schemes and providers is 31st October 2026. By this date, all pension providers and schemes must have connected their workplace pension records to the PDP. Over 60 million workplace and personal pensions have been connected so far, and tens of millions of additional State Pension records have also been added [*].
How will Pensions Dashboards work?
The Pensions Dashboards ecosystem is designed to make it as easy as possible for end-users, the general public. Multiple parties and technical services will all come together to create find and view interfaces, central digital architecture, and of course the dashboards themselves.
Using the Pensions and MoneyHelper Dashboards, users will provide key details to the consent and authorisation and the identity services. Using provided personal data such as passport and driving licence details, these services will then verify and authenticate the user’s identity. The consent and authorisation service will also help users to set permissions and authorisations for releasing information to the dashboards. No pension information will ever be stored; when matching pensions are discovered, the consent and authorisation services will manage access to the information in line with the authorisation already given by the user.
What will Mantle do?
What is Mantle’s role in the Pensions Dashboard rollout? Providing the data on behalf of our corner of the pensions industry. One of our main tasks will be accurately calculating Estimated Retirement Incomes (ERIs) and passing this information to the government. An ERI figure must be refreshed annually.
The 100% automation of benefit calculations is built into Mantle’s platform, making it a trivial matter to generate and send these ERIs onwards. Mantle has selected Pension Fusion as its Integrated Service Provider (ISP). All data is automatically pushed to it and stored. Mantle looks for changes in underlying data and automatically refreshes the ERI as required, pushing the new value to the Pension Fusion ISP.
Embrace modern changes in pensions with Mantle
The creation of the pensions dashboards ecosystem has been a significant undertaking by the government. Once live, it will give many workers a clear understanding of their pensions: where they come from and what they can expect to receive, whether they are retired or not.
The onus then falls to pension schemes and providers to ensure they have sent all relevant information to the dashboards. This is not just optional; it is a legal requirement, and pension regulators like the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) will monitor for non-compliance.
Mantle is ready to meet these changes. We understand that dashboards will not provide all the answers that members have about their pensions. In fact, a service like the MoneyHelper Dashboard may only result in more questions than before a member used it. This can result in added burdens to administrators as they are flooded by questions from understandably concerned members.
Mantle’s automations are designed to ease these worries, providing a clear experience for members while easing burdens and issues for administrators. The rollout of these dashboards marks a new era of transparency and empowerment in pensions, and Mantle is ready to make that transition seamless for both administrators and members.
Want to know more about how Mantle can help you? Clean data and good administration open the door to automation, cost savings, satisfied members, and easy compliance. Book a discovery call and watch how we transform your approach to pension management.
Discover how Mantle is dashboards ready below. Mantle’s Graeme Riddoch provides an overview of the challenges pension schemes face when implementing pensions dashboards. Watch the video.
FAQs
Who has ownership of the Pensions Dashboards?
The Pensions Dashboards will be held by the Department for Work & Pensions, part of the UK government.
Do you have to be retired to view the Pensions Dashboards?
No, you will not have to be retired to view the Pensions Dashboards. Those yet to retire will instead see future pension information.
Can personal and stakeholder pensions be counted in the Pensions Dashboard?
Yes, personal and stakeholder pensions can and should be counted in the Pensions Dashboard. All FCA-regulated providers have a legal duty to connect to the dashboards ecosystem. The purpose of the Dashboard is to show individuals all of their pensions, and this includes ones that might not come from employment.
Are the Pensions Dashboards a pension consolidation scheme?
No, the Pensions Dashboard is not the same as a pension consolidation scheme. The Pensions Dashboard will exist as a place for UK retirees to see all their pensions in one single place. It will also give them an estimate of what they will have come their age of retirement.
A pension consolidation scheme is designed to find individual pension pots and bring them together into one saving stream. It is a form of pension savings that is unconnected to what is offered by the Pensions Dashboard.
