19 May 2025 – PDP PUR #11 webinar

PDP holds a webinar on their 11th six-monthly Progress Update Report (PUR).

15 May 2025 – PDP PUR #11

PDP publishes its 11th six-monthly Progress Update Report (PUR) including, for the first time, a separate Pensions Dashboards Advisory Group (PDAG) Report.

On the same day, PDP also published Guidance in support of the PDP Reporting Standards.

8 May 2025 – PDP CDA DPIA

PDP publishes the CDA DPIA.

7 May 2025 – WPC letter to MfP

Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee Debbie Abrahams MP sends a letter with 15 questions on the delivery of dashboards to Minister for Pensions (MfP) Torsten Bell MP, requesting a reply by 21 May.

6 May 2025 – Connections and launch call

Three more providers announce their live connections to the dashboards ecosystem (in addition to Legal & General, AJ Bell and Standard Life mentioned below): Aegon (including the Aon Master Trust which they administer), Barnett Waddingham and Moneybox.

At the latter, Brian Byrnes calls for government to make “a firm commitment to making dashboards available to the public by 2026 … [and] to transparency in its findings from the user testing phase, enabling industry to learn from this insight and support the successful development of future commercial dashboards”.

2 May 2025 – CDA cost increase

On the Government’s Find a Tender portal, MaPS publishes an F20 Modification notice explaining how Capgemini’s costs for delivering and operating the Central Digital Architecture (CDA), to September 2028, have increased by about 26% from £57m to £72m.

30 April 2025 – Data connection day

As we reach the “Connect by” date for Cohort 1(a) of pension schemes and providers, various firms announce how they have completed connecting their pension data to the dashboards ecosystem, including AJBell and Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group.

29 April 2025 – WTW survey results

A WTW press release highlights the findings of its polling of 68 UK pension scheme managers at a WTW Pensions Dashboard Webinar on 2 April 2025.

26 April 2025 – Pensions Minister on Money Box

Asked by BBC Radio 4 Money Box presenter Paul Lewis: “When will Money Box listeners be able to log on to the pensions dashboard and see all their pensions in one place?”, the Pensions Minister Torsten Bell replies: “I can’t tell you an exact date … [but] I think we’re talking about a couple of years when we’ll see widespread use”.

24 April 2025 – Small Pots legislation

In a press release, DWP confirms the upcoming Pensions Bill will include provisions to address the proliferation of small pension pots. The announcement is accompanied by the Report of the Small Pots Delivery Group including Chapter 2 on proposed Interaction with Dashboards.

23 April 2025 – Provider and Scheme Readiness

PDP publishes a survey report on the readiness of FCA regulated pension providers, echoing a parallel report from TPR on the readiness of pension schemes (published on 5 March), together with an accompanying blog article from Chris Curry.

17 April 2025 – L&G is first connected provider

A PDP announcement confirms the first pension provider (which is Legal & General) has connected to the pensions dashboards ecosystem.

14 April 2025 – FCA Regulatory Initiatives Grid (RIG)

The FCA publishes an updated version of its RIG including that it doesn’t intend to commence the authorisation of any applicant private sector dashboard operators until H2 2026 (at the very earliest, as this is subject to numerous external dependencies).

8 April 2025 – FCA work programme

The FCA publishes its 2025/26 work programme including that “we will invest £700,000 to establish an authorisations gateway for private sector pensions dashboard operators”.

3 April 2025 – PDP update webinar

PDP and TPR host a webinar giving updates on registration codes for data providers.

1 April 2025 – Two IFS reports

The Institute for Fiscal Studies publishes two reports (one on individuals’ challenges, the other on proposed policies) mentioning how dashboards will help people deciding how to use their defined contribution pensions to provide incomes in retirement.

27 March 2025 – Inadequacy Invisibility

In an FT Adviser article, Tara O’Connor quotes what I said at the PASA Annual Conference:

21 March 2025 – Third party data connections

PDP publishes a blog article for pension schemes and providers connecting their data to the ecosystem via a third party.

19 March 2025 – Standard Life and WPC

Three Phoenix Group representatives (Evey Tang, Matt Burrell & Timothy Fassam) show the Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) members the nascent Standard Life private sector pensions dashboard. As I told the WPC a fortnight previously, it breaks my heart that we may not see any private sector dashboards actually emerge given the delivery pathway is so onerous and uncertain.

18 March 2025 – PDP blog

In a PDP blog article, Chris Curry summarises what pension schemes and providers must do to connect the data they hold to the pensions dashboards ecosystem.

13 March 2025 – PDP Standards published

PDP publishes V2.0 of the MaPS Data Standards, Technical Standards, Reporting Standards and Code of Connection (comprising Security, Service and Operational Standards) now all approved by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities (Northern Ireland).

Design Standards, essential for private sector dashboards are, of course, still months away.

5 March 2025 – WPC oral evidence session and 3 providers connected

The Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) holds an oral evidence session on progress towards dashboards from 11 witnesses from industry, FCA, TPR and MaPS. Rewatch the session here, or read the transcript here: HTML or pdf versions. My written evidence is here. At the session, PDP announces that Heywood, Legal & General and Pension Fusion have completed their journeys to connect their data to the PDP CDA.

27 February 2025 – FCA discussion closes

FCA’s consultation on its Discussion Paper DP24/3 closes, with one firm calling in its response for private sector regulated pensions dashboards to be delayed.

25 February 2025 – PDP SRO appointment letter

DWP publishes the letter formally appointing Iain Patterson as the Senior Responsible Owner of the Pensions Dashboards Programme. The letter is from three different bodies: MaPS, DWP and IPA.

22 February 2025 – Daily Express report

A report in the Daily Express discusses upcoming dashboards.

17 February 2025 – MoneyHelper dashboard demo

At a PDP Connection Forum, the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard (MHPD) team demonstrate the latest Figma prototype of the MHPD and talk about their citizen testing plans. See the slides here, and the Q&A from the session here.

13 February 2025 – The Martin Lewis Podcast and FCA consultation

On a special pensions edition of The Martin Lewis Podcast on BBC Sounds, Martin mentions the (potential) launch of pensions dashboards next year. Listen from 39:00.

Meanwhile, FCA’s pensions targeted support consultation CP24/27 closes, with TISA saying in its response to Q21 that “There needs to be a seamless way for users to access off-dashboard targeted support services from their pension provider(s) [and] expanding the [dashboard] data export permissions to enable firms to receive the data directly would help achieve this”.

12 February 2025 – IFS small pots report

A report on small pension pots from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says that “it would be wasteful to repeat all the work done for pensions dashboards when creating a clearing house or central registry, rather than utilising [the dashboards] platform”. Quite!

6 February 2025 – PDP 2025 forward look video

In a PDP video update, PDP Chris Curry highlights plans for 2025, including starting “preliminary work on identifying opportunities for regulated dashboards” (which seems a bit tardy seeing as we already know from international evidence, as I said in my LinkedIn post, consumers overwhelmingly want to use regulated dashboards, on familiar apps, from brands they trust, as opposed to the unregulated government dashboard).

29 January 2025 – WPC oral evidence

At an Oral evidence session of the Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) reviewing the DWP’s Annual Report and Accounts, Committee Member John Milne (Liberal Democrat MP for Horsham) asks DWP Permanent Secretary Sir Peter Schofield, and one of his Director Generals Neil Couling, four dashboards questions.

Watch here (7 minutes from 11:09:45 to 11:16:45) or read the transcript here (Q56 to Q59).

27 January 2025 – FCA registration codes process and MoneyHelper alpha update

FCA publishes a process and application form by which FCA-regulated pension providers can apply to the FCA for a code allowing them to register (with MaPS) their data connection to the dashboards ecosystem.

Meanwhile, GDS publishes an update on the alpha Service Standard Assessment (SSA) of the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard (MHPD) which took place on 10 July 2024, with the report being published on 14 October 2024.

At that time, the alpha SSA assessed the MHPD as green against 13 of the 14 Points in the GDS Service Standard, but it was assessed as amber against point 12.

Now, GDS is publishing the outcome of the review of further evidence against this amber rating (which happened on 13 November 2024), with the result that the assessment of Point 12 is now green, making the result of the overall alpha SSA of the MHPD green.

17 January 2025 – IPA Annual Report 2023-24

The Cabinet Office / HM Treasury Infrastructure and Projects Authority publishes its Annual Report for 2023-24 showing, on page 34, that in 2023 their delivery confidence assessment (DCA) of PDP returned from Red to Amber, as a result of the programme reset.

8 January 2025 – PDP Reporting Standards

PDP updates it reporting standards including a relaxation for connected data providers not to have to commence regular reporting to MaPS until a later date.

3 January 2025 – ‘Dead money’ on dashboards?

2024 ended with a PensionsAge article and 2025 (the twelfth year of this blog) starts with another one: pension firm Cartwright advises scheme trustees to consider the pros and cons of having to connect to the dashboards ecosystem for just a relatively short time before the scheme is, for example, bought out (after which the buy-out provider would then take over responsibility for connecting to the ecosystem).