The government body said in its latest progress report that it will take a number of years for the dashboards to be ready for widespread use although programme set up will start to take place early in 2021.

The long timeline has received a mixed response, including criticism from Royal London.

Helen Morrissey, pension specialist at Royal London, said: “After already progressing at a snail’s pace for some time it is hugely disappointing to see this project further delayed. Every delay risks letting down a generation of savers.”

However, others have said the timeline is realistic given the amount of work involved.

Pensions Dashboards are a pensions industry-government initiative to give pension savers all their pension information in one online place.

The updated Pension Dashboard timeline is: 

• Phase 1 (from 2020) - Programme Setup and Planning: Currently underway, includes agreeing architecture, procurement for the digital architecture and the first version of data standards, expected to be published in December.
• Phase 2 (from 2021) - Develop & Test: The PDP will work with the supplier(s) to begin building, integration and testing of the digital architecture of dashboards. First dashboard providers set up for user testing.
• Phase 3 (from 2022) - Voluntary Onboarding and Testing: The PDP will connect volunteer pension schemes and providers to the service, using real data.
• Phase 4 (from 2023) - Staged Onboarding and dashboards to be available: Schemes and providers will begin to be compelled (by law and FCA rules) to connect to the dashboards system. It is expected that there will be sufficient ‘findable’ pensions so that dashboards will be ready to be offered to consumers. This is known as the ‘dashboards available point’.
• Phase 5 - Transition to Business as Usual (no date given): In this phase it is anticipated there will be a high level of coverage of people’s pensions.

Chris Curry, principal of the Pensions Dashboards Programme at MAPS, said: “While dashboards are a simple concept, the delivery of dashboards will be complex and is reliant on collaboration between the PDP and many other organisations across Government, regulators, dashboard providers, pension schemes and providers to complete actions at a specific time.

“Already, through the qualitative research and the Call for Input, industry has provided useful insight into the challenges of verifying people’s identities and matching them to pensions. We are working on defining our requirements for this, which will provide greater clarity. We will continue to work with industry to find and develop robust solutions to these and other challenges. 

Pensions Guy Opperman, said: “Pensions Dashboards will revolutionise retirement saving which is why it’s vital we get them right. I’m encouraged by the progress on the project to date, the sensible timetable for development incorporating testing, rigour and refinement, and the continued collaboration driving this forward.”

The PDP Progress Update Report is available here