The government-backed pensions dashboard programme is designed to deliver online pension hubs to millions of UK pension savers, giving them a single digital location to view all their pension savings.

Over half (60%) of pensions professionals said that multiple dashboards will be a hindrance to the customer experience.

However, 90% of the pension professionals polled at a virtual meeting of The Pensions Net Work believed the pension dashboards would provide useful and comprehensive information to the majority of consumers by 2030.

The poll was taken after panelists from the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) shared insights from the work undertaken to date and planned by the Pensions Dashboard Project (PDP) and specifically on the development of the MaPS dashboard.

John Moret, chairman of The-Pensions-Net-Work and Financial Planning industry veteran, said: “As we heard from our MaPS speakers, good progress has been made recently on the PDP but when one sees what the Swedish dashboard offers it is clear that there is a vast amount of development work still to be undertaken. Given the track record on the development of the dashboard, prior to the PDP, it is hardly surprising that so many of the TPNW members are sceptical of the published timelines being achieved. 

“A key point that was endorsed by several members, was the importance of reliable state pension information being available from the outset if dashboards are to be credible and achieve their objectives. Clearly there are many that doubt the wisdom of multiple dashboards being available and I am sure that those doubts were confirmed by seeing what has been achieved in Sweden with a single dashboard.”

The PDP hired consultants Capgemini in September to deliver the critical technical framework needed to bring the dashboards to life as they enter a crucial “develop and test” phase. 

Capgemini has been tasked with providing the pensions finder service, consent and authorisation service and governance register.

Capgemini will work with industry fintech Origo to build the central digital architecture for the system.

The awarding of the contract marks end of the first phase of the PDP.

Next steps will include building the software that will make pensions dashboards work and testing the ecosystem, with volunteer organisations that have signed up to be part of the testing phases.