Only one in 20 pension schemes expects to provide value data for all their members in time for this year’s deadlines.
Under Financial Conduct Authority rules, large pension providers must connect to pensions dashboards by the end of August. Money purchase schemes used for automatic enrolment must connect from the end of September, followed by non-money purchase schemes from the end of November. Public service pension schemes will be expected to connect by the end of September 2024.
WTW’s poll of 100 trustees and in-house pensions managers reveals that 76% of schemes are confident they will comply with their dashboard duties in time for their deadline. However, just 5% expect to be able to provide pensions value data for all members in time.
The survey found that 46% of schemes expect value data to be available for up to 90% of members, while 21% do not yet know what level of member coverage they will achieve. Fewer than half (48%) of those surveyed were confident that their scheme would be able to manage the increase in enquiries, while 35% anticipate problems in coping with the higher volume.
“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,” said WTW outsourcing director Geraldine Brassett. “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.”
