A fully-functioning pensions dashboard could be ready to go live as soon as next year, provided clear and effective governance standards are put in place, the technology provider leading its development has said.
In a demonstration to pension providers and other interested parties, Origo revealed it had built the back-end technology for a pensions dashboard, meaning only the front-end - the part savers will use - was left to complete.
However, Origo’s managing director Paul Pettit said this would require the industry and government to agree upon strict identity safeguards to ensure the information was not being given to “scammers and liberators”.
He said once governance standards had been decided upon, it would be straightforward to build the dashboard itself.
A mock-up front-end of the system offers a‘find pension’ function, which matches a real person with their pension account, including a valuation, in just a few seconds.
Mr Pettitt said technology is not the issue in delivering a completed pensions dashboard, a beta version of which was forecast for 2017.
“Working alongside a coalition of the willing, we have been able to demonstrate that the underlying engine, which is needed to request and feed data from many sources to one or more dashboards, now exists.”
For pension schemes already using Origo’s Contract Enquiry technology, plugging into the back-end of the dashboard would be “extremely easy” and things could be up and running sometime next year, Mr Pettit said.
However, he said for workplace schemes not using Origo’s technology, it may not be as straightforward. It would be particularly difficult for schemes with outdated technology and old-fashioned record-keeping practices, he said.
Many in the industry have expressed concerns that old workplace schemes will boycott the pensions dashboard - which as yet is entirely voluntary - both because it would be expensive to update their systems, and because it would encourage members to consolidate numerous pensions into one account, resulting in large volumes of outflows for the less consumer-friendly schemes.
Origo is a not-for-profit joint venture owned by a number of UK life companies, including: Aegon, Ageas, Aviva, Axa Wealth, Friends Life, Just Retirement, MetLife, Legal & General, Prudential, Royal London, Scottish Widows, Standard Life, Unum and Zurich.
There was some disagreement earlier this year on the pension dashboard between Origo and the Tax Incentivised Savings Association, which was pushing forward with a group of similar member companies towards the same dashboard goal.
james.fernyhough@ft.com
