Wouldn’t it be easier to see all your pension savings together in one place – including your State Pension?
Well soon you’ll be able to. The pensions dashboard, which is being developed by the government and the pension and financial industry, will allow you to log in securely and see all your pension savings together in one place online.
Using data from your pension providers and the government, the dashboard will show you a total of how much you’ve saved so far, and the savings you could have when you retire.
The pensions dashboard aims to help you feel more confident about dealing with your pension savings so you can make plans for the retirement you want.
How will the pensions dashboard work?
The pensions dashboard will tap into an ‘ecosystem’ to search for pension details. The ecosystem involves connecting lots of separate organisations and systems with technology and making sure they all work together. As you can imagine, it’s an enormous and complicated project.
In fact there will be a range of different dashboards all using the same ecosystem. The government’s Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is developing the original dashboard but financial organisations, such as banks and pension providers, are being encouraged to set up their own dashboards.
What will using the dashboard be like?
The government is still working through the exact process… but this is the kind of thing you could expect:
- First, visit your dashboard. To keep your personal details safe, you’ll be asked to confirm your identity – this is where we’d encourage you to add your National Insurance number.
- Then you’ll need to:
a. give the dashboard permission to share your personal details with the pension schemes and providers it needs to find, and
b. authorise the schemes and providers to send your pension information to the dashboard so you can see it. You can withdraw your permission at any time. - The dashboard’s pension finder will search through pension schemes and providers to find pensions that match your details.
- When your information is matched with corresponding pensions information, the provider or scheme will send a unique identifier to the dashboard.
- You’ll need to confirm you wish to view the corresponding pensions information.
- The provider or scheme will send the information directly to the dashboard.
- The dashboard will list all the pensions it’s found for you. Only you will be able to see this.
You’ll also be able to search for individual pension schemes or providers by name.
Watch a video about pensions dashboards and how you’ll be able to use them.
Making the dashboard work better for you
If you have a pension with NOW: Pensions, there are things you can do to help get the most out of the pensions dashboard.
Make sure the personal details in your Gateway account are as up to date and complete as possible. In particular, please make sure we’ve got your correct National Insurance number.
We’ll need to match our records to the dashboard
As a pensions provider, we’ll need to connect to the MaPS dashboard and match every record we’ve got for a Scheme member to the information in the dashboard’s ecosystem.
The more up-to-date your information is, and the more easily we can identify you, the more likely it is we’ll be able to get a complete match – so the dashboard will work better for you. Your National Insurance number is especially useful because other people could have the same name or date of birth as you, as your National Insurance number is unique to you.
We’d encourage you to use your National Insurance number to log in to the ecosystem. This will help us, and other pensions providers match as many of our savers as possible with their pension savings.
If pensions providers can only match some of your details, the dashboard won’t work as well for you, and as your provider we’ll have to ask you more questions about your personal details. So it makes sense to update your details as much as possible.
When will I be able to use the pensions dashboard?
Pensions dashboards is a big and complicated project that’s been in development for several years.
The current consensus is that dashboards will start to be rolled out to the public in 2024.
In the meantime, it’s a good idea to make sure you know where all your pensions are, and that your contact details are up to date with all the pension providers you have.
NP/B0038/09/2022
