The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing renewed scrutiny over pensions dashboards progress, with the Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) writing to the Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, to highlight a number of industry concerns and queries.

Industry experts recently appeared in front of the WPC to discuss the ongoing preparations being done on pensions dashboards, raising concerns around issues such as regulatory restrictions and launch timelines.

WPC chair, Debbie Abrahams, has since written to Bell to follow up on a number of issues raised during the inquiry.

In particular, she noted that there were some concerns about the number of providers and schemes that have applied to defer connection beyond the October 2026 deadline, and about the fact that none of them has yet received a response.

"We asked the regulators about this, and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) told us that, whilst they understood the decisions were imminent, they felt unable to share the details with us, and that we would have to ask the department," Abrahams wrote.

Given this, she queried how many providers and schemes have applied to defer connection beyond October 2026, how many of those applications have been approved, and when those providers and schemes will be notified.

Abrahams also touched on industry concerns around a lack of certainty around standards, particularly the data standards, which will provide the basis for data interoperability across the dashboards ecosystem, and will apply to all pension providers and schemes.

"We were told the general consensus within the industry was that the process had been “very last minute”, that many schemes were due to connect in the next few months, without these standards having been finalised, and that, partly as a result of this, compliance with some of the details would not be possible," she wrote.

Whilst Abrahams acknowledged that the data standards have now been signed off on, she suggested that industry concerns still remain, with further worries raised around the fact that a lot of the data held by medium and smaller schemes is not fully digitised, as well as concerns over data matching, the fact that data can easily get out of date.

She therefore queried whether the government thinks that pension providers and schemes have been given the certainty they need to meet the duties being placed on them, particularly around the finalising of data standards.

She also questioned what consideration is being given to the problem of un-digitised data, and how robust the data available to the dashboards ecosystem will need to be before
dashboards are made available to the public.

In addition to this, Abrahams asked for further clarification as to whether confirmation of the dashboards available point (DAP) will precede the launch of the MoneyHelper dashboard as well as the private sector dashboards.

This was not the only query around private sector dashboards, previously known as commercial dashboards, as Abrahams pointed out that industry experts had raised concerns about when private sector dashboards would ever appear.

Indeed, she noted that Moneybox head of personal finance, Brian Byrnes, said we might have to wait until 2029-30, and that Moneybox was not yet developing a dashboard owing to continuing uncertainty, whilst fellow panellist, Richard Smith, said he feared we might never see them.

"We note the data standards for pension providers and schemes have now been signed off, however, and that this might now permit the design standards to be finalised," she added, asking the DWP to confirm when the design standards are expected to be finalised.

She also queried whether the government is fully committed to facilitating the delivery of private sector dashboards, and if so, when it expects the first private sector dashboards to be made available to the general public.

Abrahams also raised queries around the danger of over-regulation, querying how confident is the Department that the regulatory burden will not deter potential
dashboard operators from entering the market?

She also asked when dashboards will permit people to carry out transactions – for example, by consolidating pension pots or making additional payments, and whether this decision will sit with DWP or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

However, the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has previously provided some clarity in some of these areas.

In particular, the PDP has repeatedly stressed its commitment to private-sector dashboards, with PDP principal, Chris Curry, recently confirming that the PDP has entered the discovery phase of its work on private-sector dashboards.

In addition to this, the PDP recently told Pensions Age that whilst some may be keen to push for more transactional abilities, the current focus is on delivering the first iteration of dashboards, with user testing likely to feed into any work on post-view capabilities.

Curry stated: "Currently, we are just concentrating on getting that first version up and running and then testing that with consumers to find out what other features they think would be most useful."

The PDP also recently provided an update on the design standards to Pensions Age, confirming that it is expecting to make some minor adjustments to those as it responds to user testing through this year, although no significant changes to the principles-based approach are expected.

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