Just over a quarter (26.37 per cent) of schemes said their biggest concern regarding dashboards was ensuring the matching process runs successfully, a survey from Sackers & Partners has revealed.

The other main concern was providing accurate defined benefit (DB) value data with 25.27 per cent highlighting this as a concern.

This contrasted to 2022 when the same question was asked, when 40 per cent of schemes said their biggest concern was providing accurate DB value data, while 19 per cent said data matching.

Commenting on the results, Sackers partner, Emily Forrest, said dashboards had become the “hot topic of the summer”, with schemes and their administrators needing to mobilise at pace to get ready for connection.

“For many schemes, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guidance will mean connecting in 2025.

“The fact that DB value data has been overtaken by matching as the biggest concern for schemes is not a huge surprise.

“It probably reflects the fact that schemes have started taking action and are seeing first-hand how challenging the data matching workstream will be.”

Forrest noted that legislation does not dictate what matching criteria should be, arguing that it is for trustees to decide their matching policy and which data fields to use for matching purposes.

“Matching criteria have to be right for each scheme and trustees can only take this decision once they understand how confident they can be in their scheme data and its ability to deliver accurate matching,” she said.

“We expect matching to be one of the most high-stakes aspects of dashboards when they go live, with schemes likely to receive millions of ‘find requests’ in the first few months after launch.

“Improving data quality and fully understanding the decisions about matching need to be a priority within schemes’ dashboards projects.”

Forrest emphasised: “Trustees should be setting the governance framework now for getting from here to connection and beyond.

“Trustees will be expected to have a firm handle on all the decisions they’ve made along the way and maintain a clear audit trail, including their decisions around matching.”

She encouraged schemes to consider having a delegated working group to take some of the burden and to engage with their administrators.

“Get on top of data cleansing and work out your matching criteria, and don’t forget the background elements such as updating your privacy notice to cover dashboards, data protection impact assessments and cyber security policies, as these are often elements that can get overlooked in large scale projects,” she added.

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