The Money and Pensions Service has signed a £1.8m deal with Dutch outfit Digidentity to provide an identity service for its Pensions Dashboards Programme.
Maps agreed the two-year contract as part of its testing initiative for the PDP, which will be responsible for a non-commercial dashboard.
According to the tender notice, the identity service provides a key function for dashboards, aiming “to give users confidence that access to their pension information is protected and additionally to give pension providers confidence that they are releasing information to the right person”.
In November, Altus and ITM together launched the first commercial pensions dashboards integrated service provider.
Maps said it was keen to encourage other organisations, such as banks, fintech companies and pension providers, to offer their own dashboards that would compete with its own.
It is currently working with Aviva, Bud and Moneyhub on a test phase that will see the chosen providers prepare to connect their dashboards to the central digital architecture. Maps programme director Richard James said the body’s testing would help to develop the dashboards’ technical and design standards.
“Much of the objective for these standards is to mitigate potential consumer harms, such as individuals making detrimental financial decisions after using a dashboard or failing to understand the information they see,” he said.
“We will also be able to test the commercial proposition, to see how layering value-add services around the dashboard can work. Dashboards themselves are not allowed to make calculations, for example, but this facility might be on offer elsewhere to support consumers.”
Earlier in January, research published by the Association of British Insurers found seven in 10 savers would find it useful for dashboards to show how changing their contribution and retirement age can impact their retirement income.
The dashboards will currently only allow people to see their pension pots in one place as a read-only service.
Alex Janiaud is deputy editor of FTAdviser's sister publication Pensions Expert
