The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) draft regulations on pensions dashboards are expected to be published “before the end of this year or early into next year”, according to Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) principal, Chris Curry.

Speaking during a session at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) Annual Conference 2021, Curry said the PDP’s continued work on data standards and estimated retirement income (ERI) was “really important”, and will culminate in the DWP’s publication of draft regulations that will follow on from the primary legislation passed earlier this year.

“We are expecting those draft regulations to be published before the end of this year or early into next year,” Curry stated.

“Part of those will be providing more information about the data standards of exactly what data is needed to be provided and how it needs to be provided from pension providers.

“One of the more problematic areas, I think it’s fair to say, is ERI. This is what kind of values of pensions, be they accrued pension rights or projections, will appear in the initial version of pensions dashboard and what format they will take going forward.

“That’s not just from the industry point of view, but also from the consumer perspective.”

Curry also revealed that the PDP was looking at the possibility of dashboards providing some way of indicating there is a ‘potential match’ between an individual and specific data, rather than an ‘actual match’, which would require “a bit more input from the individual to make sure that it is there”.

“It looks like it is going to be a very busy December, which is when we start to get into the testing stage, or alpha stage,” he noted. “What that means is that is when we will start testing to see what has been constructed as the technical architecture really works or not.”

Additionally, the next progress update report is due at the end of this month, Curry stated.

“That will set out some highlights that we have achieved over the past six months and will provide more detail than I’m able to give you here about what the next six months or so is likely to show in terms of progress on pensions dashboards,” he added.

Curry also confirmed that individuals’ state pensions will be one of the first sets of data to connect to dashboards, “definitely in the first tranche that we go through”.

He continued: “Once we have enough of the industry in terms of the numbers of pension memberships from state pensions, DC pensions to DB pensions, we will then see when we can start making that information available to the public through what we are calling the ‘dashboards’ available point’.

“One thing we have learn from overseas’ experiences is that dashboards are never finished, and the steady state is never really that steady, there will continue to be developments.”

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