Pensions secretary 'committed' to dashboard

Speaking at the Tisa annual conference today (November 20) Amber Rudd said the dashboard was one of the issues she was aware of being on her plate after she took the role.

Ms Rudd was appointed to the role on Friday evening after Esther McVey quit earlier in the week because of her opposition to the government's Brexit deal.

Speaking today, Ms Rudd said: "There is quite a lot on my plate but one area where I can see we are going to see some big changes is the pensions dashboard.

"The public operates so much online and they want it to be as simple and as easy as possible.

"I am very much committed to making sure the pensions dashboard works and can build on the successes of auto-enrolment."

She cited the £5m which the Department for Work and Pensions had been given in the recent Budget towards the pensions dashboard as evidence of its commitment.

The pension dashboard is supposed to launch in 2019 as an initiative to allow savers to see information on all their retirement savings in one place.

But in September, the government appeared to backtrack saying it would let the industry take lead on the project as it shied away from committing to force providers to submit client data.

So far the DWP has spent about £100,000 on the dashboard feasibility study, which was originally tabled to be published in March.

Ms Rudd said it was "important" to include some form of guidance along with the pensions dashboard but she said it was too early to say what form this would take.

She added that it was important pension providers digitised their records to help with the dashboard, and said this was an issue which could be addressed in the forthcoming consultation.

Ms Rudd said: "We need to have much more [services] digitally available. We are about to launch a consultation and we want to make sure we get it right for the users and we don't just decide for them."

damian.fantato@ft.com