Pension Dashboard

egroeg1980

Hello all.
Does anyone know of some smart pension dashboard tracker that collapses all your policies and does some cool work to simulate growth and other insights?
I have several group pen and appreciate I can move them into 1 plan, but I like them how they're offset and posistioned with ideal fees accordingly. Ideally I'm looking for a single site/provider (bit like how the banks can now capture insights from your other accounts into a single UI?) 
Had a googlesearch, but found nout - anyone stumbled across something similar?

gm0

Not aware of anything exactly like this.   All I have seen is general investment stuff - "build your own shadow overall portfolio by entering the data yourself" services which can be done in Excel or websites if so minded.

There is a long running government initiative to build a one stop shop "single view" across state and private but the government are not famous for rapid IT development and the idea is dependent on pension scheme data being made available by many companies from a wide variety of "historic" sources which never made it onto modern cleaned up IT.  Without a critical mass of data so that it actually is a complete view - it's a chocolate teapot.  Been kicked back a number of times pre-covid and taken out of coldstorage when they have a new pensions minister who is keen on it

In a more commercial world like the open banking idea you mention - this particular intermediation - let's be a portal play has not gained much traction for a couple of reasons.  1) The money is in getting you to consolidate into funds under management not giving you a whizzy view to where it is already for a small sub.  2) it's regulated even worse than retail banking so a lot of I can go freemium and then make money by xyz ideas are not on.  What you can say and do by way of guidance, insights, analysis without straying into regulated advice.  Many things you would like to do to earn fees/deliver value via the subsubscription to such a portal are heavily regulated as to what must be done, how and evidence.  It's not impossible - roboadvice suitablity report/online application stuff demonstrates that.  But how you get all the data available, clean, and who pays for that remains problematic to the single pensions view.

One day maybe somebody will crack it.  Somone was thinking about an app in this space on the forum earlier this year.  But as I have described it's not the website/app itself that's the issue or cost challenge.

Dox

gm0 said:

There is a long running government initiative to build a one stop shop "single view" across state and private but the government are not famous for rapid IT development and the idea is dependent on pension scheme data being made available by many companies from a wide variety of "historic" sources which never made it onto modern cleaned up IT.  Without a critical mass of data so that it actually is a complete view - it's a chocolate teapot.  Been kicked back a number of times pre-covid and taken out of coldstorage when they have a new pensions minister who is keen on it

At least there's someone sensible in the shape of Richard Smith - his blog is well worth reading for its good sense: https://www.pensionsdashboardsprogramme.org.uk/2020/09/02/the-quest-to-define-data-standards/

AnotherJoe

How many policies do you have that you feel the need for that? Why not consolidate down to 2 or 3 (inc current employer) if its getting unmanageable? Then its no hassle to put the numbers into a tool yourself.

I used retireeasy for a while*, I'd say thats worth it for a while, or theres cfiresim and firecalc which IIRC let you do the same sort of thing plus model pension growth against past records.

* you have to pay but then again you only need it for 2 or 3 months every few years I'd say.

Another_Saver

We were meant to have this in 2019, tsch

squirrelpie

Another_Saver said:

We were meant to have this in 2019, tsch

Wishing for unicorns doesn't always make them appear.

Another_Saver

squirrelpie said:

Another_Saver said:

We were meant to have this in 2019, tsch

Wishing for unicorns doesn't always make them appear.

It's hardly a unicorn. If pension transfers are possible, if we have Origo and open banking how hard can this really be? Government just need to get their !!!!!! in gear and deliver it.

gm0

The government led dashboard idea has been knocking around for ~15 years or so. Traction has been elusive. Compulsion has not been forthcoming to force it through in the industry.

Richard Smith's page is (as posted above) a positive thing.  And typical of "magically data standards will solve this thinking" (I am not arguing they don't help - they do).  But still optimism over experience with other industry committee based ideas where data exchange is a problem but not the main problem. Costs and incentives may not line up in a way that makes it an easy decision for the trustee or company to participate with any enthusiasm especially up front.  But being seen (politically and reputationally) to be supportive may also be a requirement.  So a not untypical scenario would be a board mandate to be seen to take part, no provision in future capex plans for any project cost and and a firm line that no opex increase must be associated with it.  CIO likely to get handed this lovely pass in a pile of similar things viewed as somewhat important but not urgent.

In any event slowing this sort of project up is dead easy. Most corporates have some awkward meeting dwelling deadwood without much relevant domain expertise lurking somewhere. Special projects like this can be a part of easing them out of line structures ahead of redundancy with a useful contribution handily delaying new costs and customer churn along the way.  Diluting the group intelligence pace and effectiveness of the cross industry initiative.  Known as the "send a donkey" strategy.  Dead easy to dress up as pragmatic and appropriate prioritisation of key resources. Sometimes it is.

By contrast if everyone (covering a useful diversity of total schemes and existing data modelling) sent the best domain experts with some old school data architecture and design skills the standards element could be sorted out quite quickly. 
This is I posit unlikely although not impossible.  Generally the more successful data exchange standardisation initiatives occur in asymmetric markets where a dominant player gets to call the shots / set the standard to a greater degree.

Rather more likely is a data exchange modeling exercise which creates an unloved incomplete esperanto which causes everyone some hassle to map into it.  This is fairly harmless.  When the protocol for data exchange is designed on top - especially aspects handling mistakes, missing flows and incorrect data - which are often missed entirely. That is when the seeds of doom are typically planted.

See also other financial services portability and aggregation initiatives such as FIX/FIXML and the loveable big kahuna of data exchange protocol disasters - UK retail energy deregulation.

cloud_dog

egroeg1980 said:

Hello all.
Does anyone know of some smart pension dashboard tracker that collapses all your policies and does some cool work to simulate growth and other insights?
I have several group pen and appreciate I can move them into 1 plan, but I like them how they're offset and posistioned with ideal fees accordingly. Ideally I'm looking for a single site/provider (bit like how the banks can now capture insights from your other accounts into a single UI?) 
Had a googlesearch, but found nout - anyone stumbled across something similar?

Do you really need it online or via an app?  How frequently do you really need to recalculate or forecast growth?  You can do all you want within spreadsheets, and other than periodically updating it with any change in holdings or investments is very low maintenance.  May not be as super sexy as other options but, really how often do you need to review your pensions and forecast growth against target.

I run a PC and will admit to being old school; I hold all the pension and investment accounts in MS Money and keep the details updated in there (using price updates and regular deposit/investment/charges features).  In order to monitor my current position against target, I've configured reports to provide me with details for my 'Early Retirement' pot(s) and for the ongoing post-retirement pot(s).  Periodically I simply run the report and add the resulting value in to my early retirement spreadsheet which plots growth (both capital and returns), inflation (guestimate), against targets.

AnotherJoe

Another_Saver said:

squirrelpie said:

Another_Saver said:

We were meant to have this in 2019, tsch

Wishing for unicorns doesn't always make them appear.

It's hardly a unicorn. If pension transfers are possible, if we have Origo and open banking how hard can this really be? Government just need to get their !!!!!! in gear and deliver it.

Really really REALLY hard.

egroeg1980

cloud_dog said:

Do you really need it online or via an app?  How frequently do you really need to recalculate or forecast growth?  You can do all you want within spreadsheets, and other than periodically updating it with any change in holdings or investments is very low maintenance.  May not be as super sexy as other options but, really how often do you need to review your pensions and forecast growth against target.

Thanks Cloud_Dog (and all the other folks) good info on the goverment dash gm0.
I do similar form of local analysis by way of an advanced set of spreadsheets and some trending formulas that are cool - but this was just the idea of "surely there's a SaaS based product on the market that does this all for you freely and easily" - clearly not, and good justification gm0 on why there is little value to the providers giving insights into other plans - the value for them is to drive consolidation.

Ok, maybe I'll put my dev hat on when I have some spare time and see if I can cobble something together. Might be the next FinTech startup empire