JAN 2026 – DRAFT CONTENT, UNDER CONSTRUCTION

ERICA – What is it, and why do we need it now?

ERICA is a new concept I’m proposing which stands for:

Estimated Retirement Income Check for Adequacy, like an MOT test for your retirement income.

The adequacy of UK society’s retirement provision is debated at length in policy circles.

But knowing whether you’re likely to have enough money to meet your needs, throughout your later life, is an intensively personal issue.

Yet the adequacy, or inadequacy, of their own retirement provision, is almost entirely invisible to millions of UK consumers.

A bridge is needed from the policy debate on pensions adequacy to personal awareness via the implementation of pensions dashboards.

ERICA is that bridge.

Two strands, same issue

Pensions Adequacy (PA) is a complex, societal-level policy debate, taking place during the second half of the 2020s. It is the focus of The Pensions Commission.

Minister for Pensions, Torsten Bell MP, said in July 2025: “The new Pensions Commission has one task: to finish the job by mapping out a path to a pensions system that is truly adequate, in the broadest sense of that word.”

Pensions Dashboards (PD) is a complex, industry and government collaborative technology delivery programme. The MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard (MHPD), operated by the government’s Money & Pensions Service (MaPS)*, enables users to securely view all their UK pensions together on their phones.

* and later, Private Sector Dashboards (PSDs)

Crucially, dashboards lead with the consumer’s total Estimated Retirement Income (ERI), i.e. the rough total amount of regular income (shown as both monthly and yearly amounts) that the user might be able to receive during their retirement from their State Pension age.

Separate teams

Across government, regulators and industry, PA and PD are being looked at by different teams of people:

• policy officials, statisticians and spokespeople are debating adequacy, whilst
• technologists, administrators and compliance teams are delivering dashboards.

Because of this separation of focus, the words “adequacy” and “dashboards” almost never appear in the same paragraph.

One rare exception was an August 2025 blog by TPR’s Patrick Coyne in which he said: “pensions dashboards … highlight the adequacy gap that many are facing”.

Patrick has made the key connection that, as well as being a societal-level issue, pensions adequacy is also highly personal to every UK working age adult.

Adequacy is personal

Consumers using the MHPD immediately see their total ERI. For most users, it’s the first time they will have ever seen this number.

Here’s an example (illustrative only – not final):

In this example, the user’s monthly income in retirement, from 2040 onwards, could be around £3,170 a month (before tax), until the user dies.

On seeing that number, many users will ask:

“Is it enough?” **, or a fuller version of that question …

“Is £3,170 a month (before tax) adequate for my needs in retirement?”

** Scottish Widows has shown that consumers find three, straightforward, consistent questions really helpful for making sense of their pensions:
1. What have I got? 2. Is it enough? 3. What can I do?

Everybody’s financial needs in retirement are different, sometimes very different. So the answer to the “Is it enough?” question is very personal.

But people do need an answer.  ERI is just a number; it doesn’t give the user any context.

This is the gap that ERICA needs to fill, turning a raw income forecast into a personal adequacy check.

[to be completed]