The majority (82 per cent) of workplace pension holders plan to use dashboards when launched, emphasising the importance of having scalable solutions that can cope with surges in demand, research from Bravura has found.

Bravura said pension dashboards were likely to experience an “explosion” of users looking to better understand and manage their future retirement savings.

For those planning to use a pension dashboard service, 76 per cent said they will have a positive impact when planning for their retirement, while 60 per cent expect to find a lost or forgotten pension.

The research also found that respondents were interested in finding and viewing their pension information (50 per cent), using dashboards to monitor pension contributions (45 per cent), and estimating their total balance at retirement age and staying updated on the performance of their pension investments (42 per cent).

In addition to this, in the longer term, if pension dashboards were able to provide services to better manage retirement money, 36 per cent of respondents would like to see insight tools such as calculators, estimators and analysers.

Meanwhile, 31 per cent would be interested in consolidating pensions via dashboards.

In addition to this, the research also found that 52 per cent of workplace pension holders were feeling overwhelmed by managing multiple pension pots, with those aged between 25 and 34 struggling the most to manage their multiple pension pots compared with any other demographic (64 per cent).

Bravura noted that since the introduction of auto-enrolment in 2012, which brought around 10 million new savers into workplace pensions, a third (33 per cent) of those aged 55 and over now face similar challenges.

Commenting on the research, Bravura propositions lead Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA), Jonathan Hawkins, said dashboards “couldn’t come at a better for the public”.

He said that aside from helping pension savers struggling to manage multiple pension pots, they could “open up a world of possibilities” for pension providers to increase the level of targeted support and personalisation for different demographics.

Hawkins added: “The potential popularity of dashboards means that all eyes will be on the industry when dashboards are open to the public.

“Whilst dashboards are federated by design and should handle surges in demand from potentially millions of calls for data.

“However, any dashboard user action beyond ‘passive monitoring’ risks incapacitating providers with large volumes of requests that require manual intervention – such as correction of errors, calculations, transfers, consolidation, or even simple requests for extra information.”

He suggested that if providers were to turn dashboards into an “opportunity” to grow and better support savers, many would need to invest in underlying technology infrastructure to “finally do away with the inefficient and messy patchwork of systems that have built up over decades”.

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