The pensions dashboard should be a “safe, non-commercial” platform, isolated from scams and “aggressive marketing”, members of parliament have stated.

Speaking at the House of Lords’ debate on the Single Financial Guidance Bill, yesterday 24 October 2017, Baroness Drake highlighted that Amendment 4 in the Bill states that the pensions dashboard should be a “safe viewing space where an individual can see all the information on their state and other pensions savings”.

The pensions dashboard, which has recently been passed on to the Department for Work and Pensions from the Treasury and the Association of British Insurers, has received large industry attention as to whether the tool will be a single government-backed platform or something that providers can also replicate and utilise on their own websites.

In the debate, Drake argued that in order for the dashboard to be successful, it needs to be a: “non-commercial, single public service dashboard that will engender trust and confidence from the public”.

“Consumers need a safe space to view their savings and pensions where they will not be aggressively marketed to and are safe from scams and being lured into poor decisions. Unless people believe the dashboard is a trusted and protected space, they will not use it.”

Also participating in the debate, former Pensions Minister Baroness Ros Altmann agreed with this view. “The public need a single dashboard. If individual private sector organisations each released their own dashboard, it would be too confusing for the public.”

Instead, it was noted that the platform should be run by the government to increase public trust. Drake said: "Consumer research reveals an anticipation or implicit assumption that the dashboard will be run by a government-backed service which people can trust because of the expectation that the Government would not use personal data for commercial gain."

To further the dashboard development, the MPs noted that the provision of data from all providers is necessary. But, Drake argued, “there are some big and significant questions still to be answered on governance, implementation and consumer protection before the government can compel all providers to provide their data, which the industry is calling for.”

The consumer protection fo millions of people in both the provision of the dashboard and the infrastructure, is a major challenge that is yet to be addressed, MPs agreed.

With the DWP’s newly announced takeover of the dashboard project, Pensions Minister Guy Opperman revealed last week that the department are to conduct a feasibility study to assess what still needs to be address before the pensions dashboard can be launched. An update on the study is due by spring next year.

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