ITM has announced it has teamed up with PLSA dashboard consultant, Richard Smith, to conduct “critical” industry research to help schemes decide their matching criteria for pensions dashboards.

The research will use real data from several large DC schemes and two smaller DB schemes to test different possible match policies, with a paper drawing on its findings expected to be released to the industry in autumn 2022.

Draft legislation has stated that trustees must decide on criteria to use for matching, and record their chosen match made and possible match policies.

Therefore, in order to remain compliant with this upcoming legislation, trustees will need to seek advice in setting appropriate match policies.

ITM’s research aims to help help by providing assurance to the current matching debate.

Another key aim of the data, according to ITM, is to provide insight on how best to set up possible matching criteria.

ITM and their partner Altus have been developing a pension dashboards ISP solution, ‘Pension Fusion’, and the matching-based work being completed in its development will inform the background to the research.

The organisations are also working together as an ‘alpha partner’ for the Pensions Dashboards Programme and have been testing linkage of their Pension Fusion ISP product with the dashboards’ ecosystem.

The first live data providers are expected to be connecting to the dashboards' ecosystem from April 2023 and they will be expected to have compliant match policies before then.

The research hopes to provide critical thinking around the most appropriate solutions for these organisations.

PLSA dashboard consultant, Richard Smith, commented: “Being able to confidently digitally match individuals to all their pension entitlements is at the heart of the whole pensions dashboards endeavour.”

ITM chief innovation officer, Maurice Titley, added: “Using our market-leading expertise, we will present a research paper that will give trustees the confidence needed to choose their match policies for onboarding to pensions dashboards.”

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