The Pensions Administration Standards Association (Pasa) has published new guidance on preparing for pensions dashboards, including interim guidance on communicating with savers and an update to its data matching convention (DMC) guidance.

The update includes an “important addition” to Pasa’s DMC Guidance, initially published in December 2021 and last updated in August 2022, to include guidance on matching without a national insurance number, and guidance on possible match responses.

Pasa also confirmed that further advice on matching in ‘split administration’ scenarios will be published as part of its upcoming values guidance, with a further update on the impact of whether personal identifiers are verified or self-asserted to follow "later in the year".

Alongside the updated DMC guidance, Pasa shared interim guidance on what administrators, providers and service centres should say to savers who enquire about dashboards before they become universally acceptable.

In the guidance, the group noted that there has been an increase in media coverage since the pensions dashboards regulations came into force in 2022, noting that whilst this has mainly been in the specialist pensions media, reports are now beginning to appear in the general media.

This, in turn, prompted an uptick in enquires from savers about dashboards to administrators, providers and service centres.

The guidance therefore provides reactive wording that administrators, providers and service centres can use in response to such enquiries, clarifying that whilst this is not mandatory, it will be helpful to savers for the industry to give consistent responses to their dashboards enquiries.

Pasa chair, Kim Gubler, commented: “Pasa has been at the forefront of preparing the industry, particularly administrators, in readiness for dashboards.

"There’s been an increase in general media coverage of dashboards recently and our members have reported an uptick in enquiries from savers.

“This guidance contains reactive wording which administrators, providers and service centres can use to respond to people’s questions. The wording is not mandatory, but it’ll be helpful to savers for the industry to give consistent responses to their dashboards enquiries.”

Adding to this, Pasa dashboards working group co-chair, Maurice Titley, said: ““Both pieces of guidance released today have been shared with the Pensions Dashboards Programme, and we’re looking forward to sharing an interview between myself and Chris Curry discussing the details of the DMC guidance in the next few weeks.”

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