Pensions dashboards are "the iceberg out there that we're going to crash into very shortly" due to the surge in members comms they are likely to generate, Local Pensions Partnership Administration (LPPA) chief technology officer, Martin Davidson, has warned.

Speaking at the Pensions UK Local Authority Conference, Davidson said that, regardless of how much data cleansing schemes undertake ahead of dashboards, "our members who access the dashboard will be contacting us", and therefore the challenge for administrators is "how are we going to handle all the queries that come in with pensions dashboards? With all the demands we've got from a staffing point of view, we need to look at how we can handle that volume of contact”.

Davidson highlighted how the contact centre sector has already embraced artificial intelligence (AI), so the tools available in that market are “relatively mature”.

Therefore, using AI as telephone support could help with member queries, for instance by an AI call agent being able to provide information, send members to FAQs on the website, send them a link, or passing them through to a call handler.

"We like the pub-fight approach to AI. We're not the first through the door, so we don't get hit. We come in afterwards and use things relatively quickly once they've proven themselves,” Davidson said.

"We're trying to automate as much as possible because, with pensions dashboards and all the regulatory change, if we can automate stuff, it's going to leave people available to do the work that we need them to do, rather than the mundane work,” he added.

Last month, The Pensions Regulator (TPR) outlined its expectations for the responsible use of AI in workplace pensions in its new AI Plan, warning that trustees and scheme managers must act now to protect savers from emerging AI-driven risks.

As part of the plan, TPR confirmed that it will publish more detailed guidance later in 2026 following engagement with the industry over the summer.

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