So when will we actually get Pensions Dashboards?  

As previously discussed the work on developing Pensions Dashboards in the UK is something that’s been on the go for years.  So at some point we really should know when we, as in we the UK public as a whole, are going to actually get to log in and use a Pensions Dashboard on our phones.  

George Osbourne (remember him?) announced that we would have Pensions Dashboards by the end of 2019.  Yeah… well… anyway, moving swiftly on.

The issue at the moment, as I see it, is that we have loads of dates for other parts of the delivery of Pensions Dashboards but not a date for what one might call “live”.   Staging dates, testing start dates, onboarding window dates,  etc. can give some misleading impressions.  You may well have read recently that we will have Dashboards from April ’23, August ’23 or “in 2023”.  The problem is no we won’t.  Not really.  At most a few thousand people will have some sort of early beta access. 

Most of the UK public will have no access to Dashboards in 2023.  There, I have said it out loud. We should probably stop saying they will.  

Why?  Well It’s time for my airport metaphor.  

The Pensions Dashboard Program is like an airline.  It knows it has to get everybody onboard before they can take off.  Lots of research shows you need most pensions connected before Dashboards are worth doing. But like an airline it takes a lot of time and process to get you onboard.  For testing and compliance read check-in and passing through security.  

In theory one person can go through check in and security in under 45 minutes. But if everybody turns up 45 mins before the flight is supposed to take off there is no way to process all the people so the flight is delayed.  Hence the airline tell you to arrive 2 hours before take off at least.  

The staging dates and onboarding dates are for the early arriving passengers (ie pensions schemes) to arrive at the airport.  It’s about a year long process to get them all onboard, the bags stowed and the plane refueled. i.e. Get hundreds of different pensions administrators responsible for tens of millions of pensions all connected to the system.   

So when will we actually arrive in Malta for our holiday?   Yes, I am really pushing this metaphor.  

Well the fact is the actual live to the general public date is not set yet.  In our dashboard circles we call this date the DAP (Dashboard Availability Date).   And its not set yet.  And it doesn’t really have a target date either.  

However, its starting to look like October 2024 might be a good pick for a target date for DAP.  The vast majority of pensions should be accessible on the system by then,  a year of testing the user experience will have taken place and the complicated regulations on how Dashboards must act will also be in place.  And frankly October 24 may well be a stretch goal!  It could go into 2025.  

I know to a lot of people October 2024 seems like a long way off and isn’t what they were expecting.   But I think we need to be more honest about when the public will really get to use Pensions Dashboards and start being much more clear about this date.