Despite the political turmoil of the past few months it appears that Whitehall and Westminster are still pressing ahead with some of the items of government business announced prior to the EU referendum.
One such area is the proposed 'Pensions Dashboard', which was first announced as part of the Spring 2016 Budget. Our post on this announcement from March this year (including the background to why this may be necessary) can be viewed via this link.
The target date for delivery of this project was set as 2019, so it is rather surprising – and indeed encouraging – that swift progress on delivery is already evident. This week the Treasury announced that a prototype of the service will be ready by March 2017.
It should, however, be noted that the proposed prototype service for next year will be limited to only 11 pension providers. While this does include some big pension providers – including NEST, the People’s Pension, and some of the major insurers – there are noticeable exceptions from this initial listing. No doubt this will be rectified over the coming years. We will publish further updates (and links) as and when this progresses further.
In the meantime The Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS) offers a pension tracing tool. This facility helps the individual saver locate “lost” pensions savings (a common problem with workers changing jobs frequently in the UK). We would obviously encourage employers to promote this service as part of their workplace savings initiatives, and indeed as part of wider financial education programmes too.