Missing information on pensions dashboard will offer ‘bad customer experience’

Missing information on the pensions dashboard may offer a “bad customer experience”, it has been suggested.

Speaking to Pensions Age, Aegon head of pensions Kate Smith explained that the lack of a fully comprehensive pensions dashboard that is able to collate all of a member’s pension information in one place, as it aims to do, may result in a negative impression.

Smith commented that the Queen’s Speech earlier this year, which forecasted plans for the next two years, failed to mention legislation for the pensions dashboard, which suggests this is unlikely before its launch date in 2019.

“The lack of legislation, [making it compulsory for schemes to provide data to the dashboard], means that not all pensions information will be there… leading to a bad customer experience,” Smith said.

Smith also noted that while commercial, more digitally-engaged schemes should find providing information to the dashboard fairly unproblematic, trust-based schemes and defined benefit schemes “may struggle to provide”.

“How do you get them [trust-based schemes] to provide to the dashboard, unless legislation is introduced”.

As a result of these issues, while it was agreed that the pensions dashboard will act as a “good stepping stone”, the platform is not likely to completely overhaul the pensions landscape and engagement, Smith opined.

In Royal London’s half-year results, published yesterday 17 August, Royal London group chief executive Phil Loney shared a similar view. “The dashboard could provide a useful starting point for those advisers and customers seeking to obtain better value for money by consolidating numerous small pension pots. There is currently no legislation to ensure that all pension providers make their data available to the dashboard, which may create gaps in the data available causing the project to fail.

“We believe it is imperative that the government legislates to mandate participation in the Pensions Dashboard as a key step to underpin greater competitive rivalry in the UK pensions sector which will in turn drive better value for money for consumers.”

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