Pension dashboards are about to transform how your members connect with their retirement savings.
Dashboards are not just about seeing all their pensions in one place – they’re about creating an emotional connection that could finally drive meaningful engagement and action. When your members see their total estimated retirement income for the first time, they’ll experience what dashboard expert Richard Smith calls the “retirement reality check” – a moment so powerful it could change their relationship with pensions forever.
At our recent Wednesday Wisdom webinar, Richard shared how pensions dashboards will fundamentally change the way members relate to their pensions – and it’s not just about making information more accessible. It’s about creating a powerful emotional connection that could transform how people think about retirement planning.
How seeing your real pension data creates emotional impact
“Seeing generic data is intellectual. But seeing your own pensions data is emotional and triggers a completely different reaction.”
Richard shared his personal journey of viewing his own 9 pensions on a dashboard, using screens developed by Moneyhub. This wasn’t just a technical demonstration – it illustrated how profoundly moving it can be to see your entire pension history in one place.
As Anders Lundstrom, CEO of the Swedish pension dashboard, told Richard: “It’s crucial to test with users’ real pensions data as it engages a different part of the brain.”
The pension information dashboards will display to members
When members use a dashboard, whether the government’s MoneyHelper version or a future private sector offering, they’ll go through a simple process:
- Identity verification via Gov.UK One Login
- Consent to share their details with pension providers
- Find process where the system searches for their pensions
On the resulting dashboard, they’ll first see their State Pension, with a monthly income figure and start date. Below that, they’ll see their workplace and personal pensions.
Crucially, for DC pensions, dashboards will display the estimated retirement income first, rather than the pot value. This is deliberate. Research consistently shows that people struggle to understand what their DC pot value means, but can easily relate to a monthly income figure.
The retirement reality check moment for pension savers
Perhaps the most powerful part of the dashboard journey is what Richard calls the “OSM” or “Oh Shit Moment” – when people see their total estimated retirement income for the first time.
“This total ERI (estimated retirement income) screen will become the most popular screen in the whole of pensions.”
For Richard, seeing his pensions adding up to about £3,333 per month (£40,000 per year) was a reality check. After tax, this would barely meet the PLSA’s ‘comfortable’ retirement living standard for a single person in London.
“Dashboards finally end the invisibility of pension inadequacy.”
This moment of truth is where the emotional impact of dashboards will be most powerful. It’s the point where awareness becomes action for many people.
How dashboards transform pensions into career-level views
Dashboards represent a fundamental shift in how we present pension information:
“Pension communications are no longer going to be primarily at scheme and provider level… but rather they’re going to be at career level.”
This change in perspective means we need to rethink how we communicate with members. Currently, each scheme or provider communicates as if what a person has with them is all they’ve got. Dashboards will expose this limitation and potentially drive a move towards more standardised, career-focused communications.
Member actions after seeing their pensions dashboard
According to Moneyhub’s survey of 2,000 users, the top actions people say they would take after seeing their pensions in one place are:
- Calculate how much more they should save to meet retirement goals (32%)
- Work out if they can retire early (30%)
- Find out more about their investments (22%)
- Get financial advice (16%)
- Put all pensions in one place (12%)
In reality, Richard notes that experience from Continental Europe suggests most people will simply check their total ERI a few times a year, spending just a few minutes on the dashboard each time.
Dashboard evolution and future development roadmap
“Start small, launch an early version, learn, iterate. Do not try and launch everything at once.”
Richard emphasised that dashboards are just being “born” this month, with the first live data being connected. Like any birth, it’s the beginning of a long journey of growth and development.
The first version won’t be perfect. It won’t show charges or investment performance – that’s for future iterations. But it will make pensions visible in a way they’ve never been before.
How dashboards drive member awareness and pension action
“Awareness plus confidence plus trust leads them to act.”
This simple equation underpins what dashboards can achieve. They will take people from a position of fear to growing awareness, then over time to confidence and trust.
It’s this emotional journey that will ultimately lead people to take action on their retirement planning. As the author Michael Morpurgo put it:
“You have to feel something properly before you can communicate it honestly.”
How pension schemes can get ready for dashboards
As dashboards approach the launch date, there are steps schemes and providers can take to support their members:
- Prepare for increased enquiries about early retirement options, contribution increases, and pension transfers
- Review scheme communications to ensure alignment with dashboard terminology
- Consider how to support members who experience that “Oh Shit Moment” when they realise their pension may not be adequate
Ultimately, dashboards won’t make pensions more exciting, but they will make them more accessible. And that’s the first crucial step towards helping people build the retirement they want.
What does the onward journey look like from a dashboard? Let us know if you’re interested in thinking this through with us and Richard Smith. We’re interested in what members might do next. Will they click to see their administrator’s details to find out more about a pension? Will they go to their employer or pension portal to increase their contributions? Will they do nothing at all?
We’re thinking about what a good onward user journey from the dashboard looks like. Please let us know if you’re interested in joining us informally to think this through – including what schemes need to prepare for and ask their administrators to do.
