The Association of British Insurers is calling on the government to legislate to force every pension scheme in the UK to feed member information into a pensions dashboard, FTAdviser has learned.
Compulsory participation could pave the way for a comprehensive pensions dashboard by as early as 2019, the ABI said. But it would also require many single employer schemes to overhaul antiquated data systems, often at great expense.
The ABI is also calling for the Financial Conduct Authority, as opposed to The Pensions Regulator, to be assigned regulatory responsibility for the dashboard.
Currently in the first phase of development, the pensions dashboard will enable consumers to view all of their pension pots on a single website.
Supporters of the initiative expect it to increase member engagement, and encourage consolidation of disparate pension pots.
While HM Treasury has ultimate responsibility for the dashboard, it has handed over the task of funding and building it to the ABI, under the auspices of a government-appointed steering group.
As yet the participation in the dashboard is entirely voluntary.
In an exclusive briefing with FTAdviser, Yvonne Braun, the ABI's director of long-term savings and protection policy, said a pension dashboard prototype was within a week of completion, and would be demonstrated to Treasury at the end of the month.
That will bring the first phase of the process to a close, and Ms Braun said the government must now decide whether or not it will make participation compulsory for all pension schemes.
She said the 17 financial firms (mainly ABI members) currently funding the dashboard agreed that compulsion was necessary to ensure the participation of single-employer pension schemes that had no commercial interest in taking part.
"It’s important that a decision is taken reasonably soon, because we haven’t got that much time," Mr Braun said.
"We have a go-live date in 2019, and so if you calculate back when decisions are made about systems ... it needs to be clear very, very soon," she said.
She said the government had responded positively to the industry's call for legislation, but added: “It’s a decision that has yet to be made."
Ms Braun said the trustees of many smaller schemes might be reluctant to perform the "data cleaning" necessary to feed into the dashboard, on the grounds that it was not in the members' interest to spend the money required.
"That's why we're saying it's very important that there's a clear legislative signal that this is a requirement," she said.
On the subject of regulation, Rob Yuille, assistant director of retirement policy at the ABI, told FTAdviser special regulatory oversight was necessary.
"We would expect that some of the types of firms that would offer dashboards are already regulated by the FCA, so it would make sense for the FCA to regulate dashboards as a matter of course," he said.
"Someone would need to do the vetting and we think it would make sense for that to be the FCA."
He said the FCA was "aware" of the ABI's view.
Mr Yuille said he expected multiple providers to build their own pensions dashboard - that is, the online interface with which consumers will interact.
However, he said the "pipes" delivering the information from pension schemes to the user interface - what he called the "pension finder service" - would likely be supplied by a single firm.
Every pension provider in the country (including the state pension) would then plug into these pipes at one end, while every dashboard provider would plug in at the other. The result would be a comprehensive pensions dashboard.
A vocal minority in the industry - mainly fintech providers hoping to build their own such service - have opposed the single-provider model, claiming it would stifle innovation.
Mr Yuille stressed that, while "most" of the industry favoured a single provider model, no final decision had been made.
On the subject of funding, Ms Braun said the next, more expensive phase of development had yet to be paid for. She said there was no chance of the government providing any money, meaning the burden would fall on the industry.
"It's something that needs to be worked through," she said, adding she hoped a "broader base" of contributors would fund the next phase, including many non-ABI members.
james.fernyhough@ft.com
