How many Pensions Dashboards will there be? Which will people use? What the research tells us...

Over the last few months, many pension providers, master trusts, banks and other organisations have come to us for help with their pensions dashboard offering.

Market-leading thinking on dashboards is developing very rapidly. So what does the landscape look like? What do you need to know right now to inform your strategy and secure your first mover advantage?

Watch our webinar ‘What do consumers want and expect from Pensions Dashboards?’ →

Who will provide pensions dashboards?

There will be multiple dashboards. To say that people will use the pensions dashboard is a bit like saying someone consumes the news.

Some of us turn on the TV and watch the same channel’s news offering at the same time each day. Some listen to the radio, some check Twitter or Youtube, some even pick up a newspaper. Many of us like to combine sources and mediums.

Much like the news, there will be an array of platforms or sources through which we can access pensions dashboard services. But there’s no spin here - the pensions data on each platform will be exactly the same.

There will be a Government pensions dashboard. The BBC of dashboards, say. This is the MoneyHelper per pensions dashboard from the Money and Pensions Service (or MaPS).

But many other dashboards will be available for consumers to use,? with Government policy actively encouraging a landscape of multiple dashboards regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority .

Much like the news, consumers will expect to be able to access their pension information on apps or websites that they already use (and trust), such as their bank, pension provider or even a money management app like Moneyhub’s .

These are collectively referred to as commercial dashboards with regulations officially calling them Qualifying Pensions Dashboard Services (QPDSs).?

Which dashboard will people use?

Only the future will tell us for sure but as we already demonstrated with our news analogy, research, including our own, shows people expect to access their pension information on dashboards across different providers.

Different research to date

Moneyhub ’s research:

In 2023, we asked a sample of our users “Which dashboard would you use?”

That makes the split:

Our own rapid consumer research from January 2023 found that 40% of people would use the Government’s dashboard.

Clearly, people understand the benefits of different commercial dashboards located within the app of a trusted brand.

Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) webinar poll

In March 2022, a PLSA pension scheme webinar audience was asked “Do you think your scheme members would look to use a pensions dashboard provided by…”

Association of British Insurers consumer research

In 2021, the ABI commissioned BritainThinks to research 4,000 users’ views, split into four groups. 1,000 weren’t shown a dashboard and 1,000 respectively were shown a dashboard provided by the Government, a pension provider and a bank. All 4,000 were asked “Who would be the best provider?”

The group who weren’t shown a dashboard responded:

The group who were shown a Government dashboard responded:

The group who were shown a dashboard from a pension provider responded:

And the group who were shown a dashboard from a major bank responded:

BritainThinks found that consumers consider the Government as a dashboard provider in the first instance, because they intuitively associate the Government with pensions and work.

The Government is also trusted as an impartial entity (compared to a private pension provider) and is expected to hold data on people’s pensions already.

However, BritainThinks survey revealed that people’s perceptions of the safety/suitability, and uptake of different dashboard providers is more likely to be driven by exposure and convenience.

Within the research:

• The group exposed to the test government dashboard were most likely to see the government as the best provider,
• The group exposed to the test bank provided dashboard were most likely to see their own bank as the best provider, and
• The group exposed to the test pension provider dashboard were most likely to see pension providers as the best provider.

So the dashboard provider which consumers saw in the testing was the one they saw as the best.

It’s therefore likely that consumers will stick with the first dashboard they become aware of and use.

Conclusion

There will be multiple commercial dashboards as well as the Government’s impartial MoneyHelper dashboard from MaPS, but all displaying the same pensions data.

People expect financial institutions such as banks or pension providers to offer a dashboard. A minority of consumers expect to use the Government’s dashboard, the majority instead preferring to use a dashboard offered by a trusted pension provider or bank.

This is likely down to having an established trust and existing relationship with these brands, as well as the convenience of finding a dashboard within apps they already use. The uptake of different dashboards will likely be driven by exposure (whose will they see first?) and ease of use.

It’s vital therefore that businesses who want to be among the first to offer a dashboard to their customers start considering the front-end (or, what the dashboard will look like and how people will interact with it) sooner rather than later.

Want to be sure yours is the first Pensions Dashboard your customers use? Drop me a message to explore our solutions.