The Pension Dashboard

xylophone

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-4364904/Pension-dashboard-showing-savings-2019.html

Could be a boon in due course....

Silvertabby

As long as all the information from all the pension schemes is input correctly....................

ChrisSargent

Silvertabby wrote: »

As long as all the information from all the pension schemes is input correctly....................

and the site is adequately secure .........I can see the scammers at work already creating spoof sites that have the look and feel and all of a sudden your hard earned savings are gone!

Malthusian

Can anyone spot the deliberate mistake? In the mockup, the figures for estimated monthly pension for defined contribution schemes seem to be based on single life, non-inflation-linked annuities (given the rate of around 5.5%pa - curiously it isn't consistent - for a 65 year old male). But the State Pension and defined benefit pensions are obviously going to be index-linked. At best it shows these "estimates" are pointless, at worst it may instill complacency.

It could be useful - now and again - but I doubt it will be worth the colossal cost. And the idea that it will encourage people to save more for their retirement is pie-in-the-sky.

At present it only appears to be old-style insurers who are participating in the dashboard (and auto-enrolment providers). Maybe they hope that if someone else does the job of letting their customers see their pensions online, they won't lose business to more modern pension providers who do that themselves. In the list of participants, only Fidelity can be classed as one of the modern fund platform providers. No Cofunds (or their parent Aegon), no Hargreaves Lansdown, no AJ Bell, no Old Mutual Wealth, or any of the other names that will be familiar to either the DIY or the IFA-using people on this forum.

hyubh

Malthusian wrote: »

Can anyone spot the deliberate mistake? In the mockup, the figures for estimated monthly pension for defined contribution schemes seem to be based on single life, non-inflation-linked annuities (given the rate of around 5.5%pa - curiously it isn't consistent - for a 65 year old male). But the State Pension and defined benefit pensions are obviously going to be index-linked. At best it shows these "estimates" are pointless, at worst it may instill complacency.

The current 'dashboard' is a prototype knocked up in double-quick time, pro bono, by a group of companies who aren't used to working with each other. You're reading waaayyy too much into a mockup.

At present it only appears to be old-style insurers who are participating in the dashboard (and auto-enrolment providers).

The actual dashboard (or dashboards) doesn't/don't actually exist yet, and the final form hasn't even be decided yet. However, current thinking is to get all DC on first, followed by DB a couple of years after that.

In the list of participants, only Fidelity can be classed as one of the modern fund platform providers.

That list of insurers was a list of participants for the prototype (and in particular, for providing test data to the pensions IT firms involved), not of the initial participants for the 'live' roll-out.

No Cofunds (or their parent Aegon), no Hargreaves Lansdown, no AJ Bell, no Old Mutual Wealth, or any of the other names that will be familiar to either the DIY or the IFA-using people on this forum.

In your desire to do it down, you've completely misread the stage where things are actually at.

Malthusian

It's due for launch in 2019. Given the difficulty of getting so many different companies to agree to provide up-to-date information in a standard format and with appropriate encryption and safeguards, it's reasonable to question how useful the thing is going to be when such a large section of the pension market has not yet agreed to take part and there are less than 2 years left to launch.

The current 'dashboard' is a prototype knocked up in double-quick time

The pensions dashboard has been in the pipeline since December 2014 and was mooted long before that. You have a different definition of "double-quick time" to me. Maybe they should have given it to the contestants on the Apprentice to knock up.

Triumph13

The other huge question is what assumptions are going in there for investment returns on DC funds and do they bear any relation whatsoever to how the funds are actually invested? I'm suspecting not which again makes it pretty useless as a projection tool.

jamesd

Could be a boon, if it's very substantially reworked:

1. Seems to exclude lots of defined benefit schemes that may have few members and paper records by requiring instant online results from them all. Since finding lost pensions is a major part of its value this is a massive oversight. A simple data dump from such schemes with name, date of birth and NI number that can be checked without the schemes having to do lots of work could resolve this and allow the mandatory participation required to properly fulfill the potential of the dashboard. This is where the greatest initial value for the scheme lies, helping those close to retiring to find out what plans they have, everywhere. It could also facilitate nationwide death benefit notifications where a member dies and executors may have major difficulties in discovering schemes that the deceased may have been in with no past job help from the individual. And of course can be a central place for change of address notifying by scheme members.

2. HMRC has records of schemes which received contracted out rebates that can be used to centrally populate a list of possible schemes to check. Big tracing payback for potentially little scheme-side work.

3. Pretending that crystallised pensions don't exist is a huge failure, meaning that lots of pensions for those who have reached 50 or 55 will vanish from the dashboard even though they are vital to retirement income. Taking the tax free lump sums as early as possible to reinvest, perhaps in ISAs, is often a good move and removal just because this has been done makes no sense.

4. I suppose it's only natural that insurance companies would want to assume that you'll be stupid and buy an annuity at a young age like 65, and from them, but something more sensible like state pension deferral value or drawdown rules levels and annuity buying at ages or life expectancies where annuities offer better value for money vs their competition, not gilts moneys worth, would be nice.

5. I suppose it'll pretend that everything gets taken at one age even though that will often be daft, leading to DB being taken before scheme normal pension age and DC treated as used to buy a lifetime annuity when drawdown to bridge the time until DB NPA is what sensible financial planning would require, perhaps accompanied by some DB transfers to DC for drawdown to preserve other DB until NPA.

6. A pensions dashboard is for life, not just until some part of some schemes has been taken. We're in a drawdown and lifelong DB world where pension pots and benefits will often be present at death and where significant lifelong and after death value for executors, administrators and schemes can be realised.

7. Retirement income isn't just pensions. This shows a disjointed pension silo mentality by excluding the other parts of the retirement picture like lifetime and other ISAs and other savings and investments. Pensions only beats nothing but isn't the whole picture. A useful start, not the end game.

chiefie

For once I think credit should be given for the idea and intent. I hope they can do it as once younger people see how they lie then it may create a sense of urgency. If only they didn't have student loans and ridiculous high property prices to pay for first ��

jamesd

chiefie wrote: »

For once I think credit should be given for the idea and intent. I hope they can do it as once younger people see how they lie then it may create a sense of urgency.

Yes potential but for young people the planning assumptions are at their worst:

1. The FCA mandated base investment returns are for a blended time horizon of about fifteen years due to an assumption of poor investment returns starting a few years ago. Fifteen years is way too short a horizon for a young person and historic or at least less pessimistic growth rates should be used.

2. Annuity buying at 65? Maybe forty years from now? Better to use drawdown assumptions like the not particularly great 4% increasing with inflation rule.

hyubh

jamesd wrote: »

Seems to exclude lots of defined benefit schemes that may have few members and paper records by requiring instant online results from them all.

The question of how to deal with the (very) long tail of private sector DB is something that needs to be answered, yes. Notwithstanding the likely moaning, public sector DB is in a much better place however due to the greater scale (even the smallest LGPS funds have benefited from this) and relative stability.

Since finding lost pensions is a major part of its value this is a massive oversight. A simple data dump from such schemes with name, date of birth and NI number that can be checked without the schemes having to do lots of work could resolve this and allow the mandatory participation required to properly fulfill the potential of the dashboard.

I like your confidence

And of course can be a central place for change of address notifying by scheme members.

Ditto

HMRC has records of schemes which received contracted out rebates that can be used to centrally populate a list of possible schemes to check. Big tracing payback for potentially little scheme-side work.

Yes, though only once the GMP reconciliation deadline passed at the end of next year (there are a lot of misassigned service periods still being resolved).