Glossary · UK
What is Pensions Dashboard?
A government-backed online service, being rolled out in stages, that will let people see all their pensions -- including the State Pension -- securely in one place.
Full Definition
The Pensions Dashboard is a planned online service that will let people log in once and see information about all their pensions -- workplace pensions, personal pensions, and the State Pension -- in a single place, rather than having to contact each provider separately or track down old paperwork. It is being delivered through the Pensions Dashboards Programme, with connection to the central digital architecture being staged across pension schemes and providers over time according to their size, starting with the largest schemes first, under a duty on schemes and providers set out in the Pensions Dashboards Regulations. A public-facing dashboard (or dashboards, since several regulated organisations, including MoneyHelper, are expected to offer their own versions using the same underlying data) is intended to become available once enough schemes have connected and tested their data to give users a genuinely comprehensive view, rather than a partial and potentially misleading one. The stated aims include helping people who have lost track of old pensions (particularly relevant given how often people change jobs and, historically, auto-enrolment pensions) reconnect with forgotten pots, encouraging better retirement planning by making it easier to see total expected pension income in one view, and reducing reliance on paper statements and multiple provider logins. The programme's timetable has slipped more than once since it was first proposed, reflecting the scale and complexity of connecting thousands of pension schemes and providers to a shared, secure digital standard, so savers should continue to keep their own records of pension providers and policy numbers in the meantime rather than waiting for the dashboard to locate pensions for them.