In some senses the pensions industry is as predictable as the tides. No matter how many times the argument around single or multiple dashboards appears to have been put to bed, whenever it is queried it inevitably gets a fresh airing.

Despite the debate, there is a broad coalition in favour of multiple dashboards, from consumer group Which?, pension providers, schemes and the Work and Pensions Committee.

Not everyone will use the Money and Pensions Service before they start planning for retirement. Some will use different dashboards for different reasons.

Restrict access to this information to a single dashboard, then you are dramatically reducing the number of people who will access their pensions data, and how they can use it to take control of their financial lives.

Simply stating that there should only be one pensions dashboard does not make it so.

The experience of the current account market is that if you don’t open up data silos, consumers will open them up for you in ways that you won’t expect.

Screen scraping technology was used by customers to access their banking data, but that meant handing over their login details to a third party.

The lesson is clear: the tide of data portability cannot be held back, but you can put in place strong consumer protections to channel it for the wider good.

This is consumers’ data and they have the right to access it in a manner of their choosing.

Share Story: