Pension dashboards present a 'once in a generation' opportunity to help people engage with their pensions and need to appeal to younger age groups, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has said.

To help dashboards succeed, the ABI recommended that forthcoming legislation and regulation should allow dashboards to be interactive to meet younger people’s digital demands.

The association said that current proposals will effectively provide a ‘read-only service’, where users can see their pension pots in once place but will not be able to take any further action, such as modelling changing their pension contributions and estimating the impact this will have on their retirement income.

Further research was conducted by Britain Thinks and showed how dashboards will work, with 60 per cent of people reporting that dashboards will help them better understand their pension.

Britain Thinks also found that there was a “very high demand” among respondents, with two in three working-age adults stating that they are likely to use them.

For some people, finding and viewing their pensions is enough of a draw to use dashboards, but others expected the service to go further, according to the research, with seven in 10 wanting them to be interactive.

This was especially true of younger people, who were more likely than those of retirement age to want to take further action, including using modelling tools to see what happens if they adjust how they contribute to their pension.

Britain Thinks research director, Rachel Rowlinson, commented: “This research has evidenced that pensions dashboards offer a real solution to significant issues consumers face in accessing, understanding and managing their pensions – which means there is a genuine appetite for use.

“The key challenge moving forwards will be to ensure that consumers are not only logging in as a one-off to look, but also being nudged to build habits around engaging with their pensions more consistently and taking active steps to plan and manage their financial futures.”

The government and regulators are expected to consult on pensions dashboards regulations in the coming weeks.

The ABI recommended that legislation should be future proof and enable providers to make dashboards interactive, a sentiment expressed by ABI director of long-term savings, Yvonne Braun, who said: “Dashboard providers have to be able to innovate to meet the needs of younger age groups, and the legislation and the regulatory regime must allow for this”.

Providers are expected to make data available to dashboards from 2023.

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