Government Working To “Revolutionise” Retirement Planning

Joint responsibility

Responsibility for delivering the government’s pension scheme is spread across several organisations:

• The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) is responsible for delivering the digital architecture
• The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is responsible for creating a non-commercial dashboard
• The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is there to ensure that workplace pension scheme trustees carry out all legislative obligations relating to pensions dashboards
• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will authorise and regulate the operators of pensions dashboard services.

Programme reset

At the end of last year, the PDP requested more time to finish building the pensions dashboards infrastructure due to a number of technical concerns. It was therefore concluded that a reset of the programme was required; this decision was announced by the Minister for Pensions in March 2023.

Regulations amendment

On 19 July, the Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023 were presented to parliament in their final form, coming into force on 9 August. This legislative instrument removed the previous staging profile and instead introduced a single statutory connection deadline of 31 October 2026 for relevant occupational pension schemes to connect to pensions dashboards. This revised date is a year later than the initial last date for connection.

Regard to the guidance

The government has now said it will work with partners and the pensions industry on a connection timetable to be published in guidance. Although the connection timetable set out in guidance will not be mandatory, there is still a requirement for scheme trustees or managers to “have regard to this guidance” and not doing so would be a breach of the legislation.

Pension administration experts

EQ are pensions experts who have been providing support services to pension scheme administrators, members, managers and trustees for over 187 years. We provide a range of pensions administration services underpinned by our award-winning software.