Only one in 20 pension schemes expect to be able to provide dashboard data for all their members by the upcoming ‘connection’ date.
The survey by Willis Towers Watson (WTW), showed that 150 days out from the first dashboard connection date, many schemes are anticipating difficulties, particularly given the expected increase in enquiries from members.
In its poll of 100 pension scheme trustees and in-house pension managers, WTW found that three-quarters said they are “confident” that they will be compliant with their dashboard duties, however only 5% said they would be able to provide data for all members at launch.
The survey discovered that nearly half (46%) expect expect data to be available for up to 90% of members, and a fifth (21%) of schemes don’t yet know what level of member coverage they will be able to achieve.
The research also showed that less than half of these schemes (48%) were confident that they would be able to manage the increase in enquiries, while more than a third (35%) anticipate that their scheme will have difficulty coping with a higher volume of enquiries.
WTW director, outsourcing (pension solutions) Geraldine Brassett, said: “Pension schemes know there is still a lot of work to do to prepare for the launch of dashboards, but there are steps they can take to minimise disruption and increase success for members.
“Understanding a scheme’s design and the quality of its data is key as most of the challenges and enquiries that schemes will face will be data related. Most schemes can expect an ‘80:20’ experience of implementation, where roughly 80% of members will be straightforward to onboard, but around 20% are likely to be more complex. This may be due to legacy issues such as equalisation or underpins, or be at a member level, including one-off benefit promises, late retirement terms or pension sharing orders.
“Understanding these different considerations at scheme, category, section, or member level is key to ensuring data is correctly configured for members and that they see the right information when they log in to a dashboard.
“We know that pensions data can be imperfect but the actions we take now to understand and resolve data issues will help to give members the confidence in dashboards. I would urge all pension schemes to work closely with their administrators and providers to help iron out their data challenges in advance of dashboards becoming available to members.”
