Six industry volunteer participants have now completed their dashboards connection journey, with a further six past the most ‘tricky part’ of integration, Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) principal, Chris Curry, has confirmed.

Speaking at the PLSA’s Local Authority conference, Curry said that “we've got six of our volunteer participants, out of a total of just under 20, who have now completed their connection journey, finished all the testing, and are now uploading their clients”.

He continued: “Some of the just under 3,000 pension schemes in total would need to join into the ecosystem going forward, and we've got a further six [volunteer participants] who are now past probably the most difficult and tricky part of their connection journey, the integration testing, which is where we see if their systems can talk to our systems and then talk back to each other and exchange the data in a safe and secure way. And so they're getting very close towards the end of their journey as well."

This builds on recent momentum surrounding dashboards, as the PDP previously confirmed that five volunteer participants had completed their connection journeys, with a number of participants also ready to begin integration testing as soon as a slot was available.

Curry added that he was “confident that by the end of the summer, we'll have had all of our voluntary participants complete their connections, and then everybody will be able to then connect to the ecosystem through their chosen routes”.

“We then will be back on track and in line with the guidance that was published last year, the guidance date by which schemes should be connected to the ecosystem by the autumn,” he added.

In December, the Money and Pensions Service (Maps) confirmed that regulatory action will not be taken against pension schemes that were unable to meet the first pensions dashboards connection date of April 2025 because they are using a third-party volunteer participants that have not completed their connection process.

According to Curry, user testing will also begin in the summer “with a small number of individuals, then will grow throughout the year to potentially tens of thousands by the end of this year, with real people actually seeing real data”.

He also reiterated the PDP’s April findings that “potentially by the end of the year, around 90 per cent of all pension scheme memberships should be accessible to pensions dashboards in the ecosystem”.

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