The Pensions Administration Standards Association will be working with the Pensions and Lifetime Saving Association and the Association of British Insurers to set up the standards for pension dashboard data matching.
To be able to provide data for the project, every pension scheme and provider will need to decide what combination of personal data items is best to be able to match a pension to an individual, such as their surname, date of birth, address, among others.
However, if schemes set their match criteria bar too high, they risk pensions not being found.
On the other hand, setting it too low potentially risks the wrong pensions being shown to the saver, Pasa said.
The industry body is working with industry, regulatory and technology organisations to deliver a set of conventions which can “strike an appropriate balance between the sensitivity and specificity of matching” .
The industry group is already engaging with the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority to help ensure the thinking behind the data matching standards is aligned with dashboards regulation.
However, Pasa has warned the conventions “will not solve the matching challenge on their own”.
“As well as adopting an appropriate data matching convention, trustees will need to work with their suppliers to implement - or build on existing - technology/data cleansing solutions which, in combination, will help to improve matches,” it stated.
Pasa is aiming to have the first standards ready for the seven alpha providers, which will connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem from late 2021, to test in early 2022.
According to Kim Gubler, Pasa’s chair, “correctly matching users to schemes’ administration records is critical for dashboards success”.
She said: “As the industry administration standards body, it makes sense for PASA to lead on developing various data matching conventions for trustees to adopt as they wish.”
David Fairs, executive director of regulatory policy, analysis and advice at TPR, welcomed the “innovative industry collaboration”.
He added: “How to best match savers to all their pots through pensions dashboards will be a key decision for trustees.
“The creation of industry conventions should provide consistency and reassure trustees they are taking a sensible approach to complying with their dashboards duties.”
maria.espadinha@ft.com
Maria Espadinha is editor of FTAdviser's sister title Pensions Expert
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