Pension funds must provide scheme data if the pensions dashboard is to be a success, industry figures have argued.

As the deadline for the pensions dashboard prototype approaches, many have considered whether pension schemes should be forced to provide information to the dashboard.

Broadstone technical director David Brooks said: “The only way the pensions dashboard can be a success is if schemes are forced to send on data.”

Nonetheless, he claimed that “some DB schemes may be reluctant where they have done a lot of work to track down members, which many have done recently and so have good levels of contact with their membership”.

Brooks added that for the method to operate well, the data must be cost effective and proportionate.

Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association deputy director DC, lifetime savings and research Nigel Peaple agreed with this view, “If contributing data is to be made compulsory, it needs to be done in a flexible and proportionate manner. This means that the dashboard should make best use of data that is already available, and should be implemented gradually over a number of years.”

Barnett Waddingham partner Paul Latimer also supports the need for pension funds to provide the required information for the dashboard to work.

“For this initiative to work properly, which means people being able to see all their pension pots, then the pensions industry needs to engage and supply the necessary information. You would hope that could be voluntary but perhaps realistically legislation would be required.”

However, Latimer pointed out that there may be certain data protection and system issues that could delay the provision of this data.

“There are IT system, IT resourcing, cost and Data Protection Act concerns that could cause holders of the data to delay or refuse to supply the information. If there is no option because it is legislated, then the pensions dashboard would have more chance of being successful,” he said.

Also commenting on this, LCP senior partner Bob Scott noted that to provide this information, schemes may need to clean up their data to ensure it is correct and accurate before sending it to the dashboard.

“In general, there are positive incentives for cleaning up data - and potential penalties for failing to do so - and the threat of compulsion in relation to the Pensions Dashboard provides another incentive for schemes to clean up data.”

Scott added: “I therefore expect the majority of pension schemes to have taken significant steps to comply by 2019 and certainly by 2021. However, there will inevitable be some schemes – for example those identified by the regulator as having extremely poor governance, some with no advisory support – who will struggle to comply.”

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