Dashboards will not drive active engagement, Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) pensions dashboards consultant, Richard Smith, has warned.

“My assertion will always be – and validated to the extent it is possible from the continental [dashboards] experience – dashboards don’t drive active engagement,” Smith said at the PLSA Annual Conference in Manchester.

“We say in one breath that auto-enrolment’s success is because inertia works and people do nothing, but then we’re expecting them to do things like increasing contribution levels,” he added.

However, Smith highlighted the importance of ‘happy inertia’, where a person may not actively be making any changes to their pension saving, but their “fear reduces as they are able to see what retirement savings they have [via a dashboard].

Instead of the industry talking about ‘engagement’ with dashboards, Smith would prefer nouns such as “awareness, confidence, trust, understanding” to be used, “but not necessarily the word ‘action’” he added.

Meanwhile, The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has advised schemes not to "down tools" and "lose sight" of their dashboard preparation duties.

In a recent blog post, TPR interim director of policy, analysis and advice, Louise Davey, said there is significant work schemes can do now to ensure savers can find their pensions and receive accurate value information when the pensions dashboards programme is launched.

All pension providers and schemes with over 100 members will have to connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem by 31 October 2026.

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