Gareth Evans, head of corporate affairs at Royal London (one of the dashboard project’s 17 participating provider firms), says the announcement of the election understandably saw the Treasury begin to withdraw from development discussions.
“We’ve got a situation where we’ve got a prototype and need to move ahead and keep the momentum up, but all the good support we’ve got from the government and Whitehall has suddenly stopped.”
Mr Evans adds that while “there have been moves to make sure that the original contributors can continue to do some work behind the scenes” in light of the holdup of government support, it “could take some time” before the process becomes truly collaborative again.
Ian McKenna, director of the Finance & Technology Research Centre (F&TRC) and independent member of the HM Treasury Pensions Dashboard steering group, agrees that the loss of Mr Kirby may not bode well for the timing of the project, but believes it could serve as an opportunity for the industry to stress the importance of the initiative.
“Obviously [Mr Kirby’s departure] doesn’t help, but we need to get more people as a nation better understanding their retirement savings.
“Even if the government never engages, there are still incredibly sound reasons to move forward and contribute. I think the tactical and interim work might have to go on for a little bit longer, but there’s no shortage of tasks to do.”
With the project now in its interim phase, those involved with the dashboard still have clear aims to work out, even in the absence of government help.
According to the ABI, the interim phase will consist of achieving four key objectives: establishing an industry-wide cost benefit analysis; conducting research on customer needs and identifying the most useful features for the dashboard; ascertaining the requirements and costs for a secure end-to-end service between data providers and data consumers, and further developing the technical data standards for all firms while working with the Pensions Administration Standards Association to finalise a code of conduct in line with The Pensions Regulator (TPR) requirements.
Dirty data gap
There are other early hurdles to overcome. ITM, one of the dashboard project’s six tech firms, assigned to look at two of the project’s five development areas, reported a “sizable ‘dirty data’ gap” in recently released research on scheme and provider data standards for the dashboard.
