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.
According to the firm, data was taken from more than 440 pension providers with over 20 million members. It was found that pension products established prior to the millennium (over three fifths of all member pots surveyed) “were found to have the highest average levels of inaccurate or missing customer data”; something often triggered by issues with legacy books and systems.
A staggering 60 per cent of defined benefit (DB) pots with a value of £100,000 to £200,000 that pre-date the year 2000 were found to have missing or inaccurate postcode data, for example. Research also showed that around 30 per cent of DB schemes set up in the same period had incorrect data for dates of birth.
Discussing the findings, ITM chairman Duncan Howorth suggests extending the criteria for providers wishing to sign-up for the pensions dashboards to include minimum data standards. This, he believes, would encourage each segment of the pensions industry to “make sure that everybody’s engaged in the process of improving data”, while firms like ITM continue to run forums and research to help the process along.
