#pensions dashboard

The Pensions Dashboard is a UK government plan to set up one large database from which every person can access their UK occupational pension data from all of their past and present employers.  The previous post on this blog criticised it on the grounds of complexity and greatly increased risk of fraud.  It could also have mentioned the lack of consent.  The government has not asked me whether I want my personal data put on their new database!

Having said this, there is a risk that, when a pension plan member reaches retirement age, the employer and administrators may have lost contact with them.  There are ad hoc arrangements whereby administrators can ask the DWP to help trace a missing member.  This should be formalised and expanded.  Only small amounts of data such as names, dates of birth and national insurance numbers would be needed.  Either individuals or plan administrators could contact the new government agency and the resources needed would be a mere fraction of those for the proposed Pensions Dashboard.  It should also be possible to implement it well before the current dashboard target date of October 2026.

In the meantime, employees should carefully keep their own records and advise plan administrators of changes of address etc.  There is also a government website called “Find pension contact details”.  It isn’t perfect, but it can often be helpful.  The link is

https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details

The government has an online service to help people find details of whom to contact regarding their old pension schemes.  It isn’t perfect, but it can be very helpful.

Go to www.gov.uk , search for “find pension contact details” and select the first item shown.  Click “Start Now” and follow the instructions.  Hopefully you will find the name, address and telephone number of the organisation administering your old pension scheme.

This should not be confused with current plans for a new “Pensions Dashboard” about which I’ll be writing fairly soon.  It’s also a very good idea to maintain your own good quality records of pensions and other financial matters.  After all, a four drawer filing cabinet will occupy only 3 square feet (less than 30% of a square metre) of floorspace in exchange for masses of storage.

The Pensions Dashboard is a well intentioned plan from the UK government.  At present, if you want to receive information about your occupational pensions, you need to get it on an individual basis from every plan where you have been a member.  The government intends to compell all plans’ administrators to submit and update data for every member in a consistent format to one large database known as the Pensions Dashboard.

Individuals can then log in to see details of all of their occupational pensions.  In my view, the government has grossly underestimated the task and the implementation date has been postponed more than once.

The Actuary, the magazine of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, has recently warned that a cyber pension fraud crisis is on the horizon.  They base this on the increasing number of pension plans putting their data online, lack of adequate internet security and members’ greater access to cash from their pension savings.  This is a cogent warning from a responsible magazine which is not given to hyperbole.  We need to take great care with the proposed Pensions Dashboard.  The link is

https://www.theactuary.com/2023/05/24/warning-cyber-pension-fraud-crisis-horizon?utm_term=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestre

The government is inviting interested parties, experts and others to comment on various issues including the proposed pension dashboard.

The problem is that each of us can easily accumulate a dozen or more pensions during our working life.  A combination of inadequate personal record keeping, changes of address and company takeovers/name changes can lead to us losing track of some of these pensions and the pension scheme administrators losing track of us.  There are pension tracing services, but none claims to be comprehensive.

The rationale of a pensions dashboard is that we can input our national insurance number and other details into a government sponsored website.  All British pension schemes will be linked to that website with details of its members and their prospective pension benefits, hence one individual search will tell us about all the pension schemes to which we belong.  The government’s intentions are good, but I forsee practical problems.

Their main problem is consent to sharing of data.  No pension scheme administrator can be sure that all of their members consent to having their data linked to a government website, especially one which is designed to be accessed easily.

Then every pension scheme will hold its records in its own format and some older schemes will still use paper records.  Administratively the proposed pensions dashboard is just too ambitious.  It would be better to have a simpler arrangement whereby scheme administrators could ask the DWP to actively help them trace missing scheme members.

The following link gives an alternative view from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries on this and other aspects of the Pension Schemes Bill.  https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/Pensions%20Bill%202nd%20Reading%20-%20Final.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Public%20Affairs%20Brief&utm_content=Public%20Affairs%20Brief+CID_cae8fd5de7db374fa921f1a0972dbb68&utm_source=NWD%20Email%20marketing&utm_term=the%20Pension%20Schemes%20Bill