Omnium Employee Benefits

Pensions dashboard proposal under threat

Former Chancellor George Osborne’s initiative to introduce a ‘pensions dashboard’, that would enable individuals to see all their pensions in one place, could be under threat.

Despite receiving widespread support across all parties, it seems that, following an official consultation, Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey is on the verge of scrapping the idea for reasons not yet made clear.

First mooted in 2016, the proposal came about because, nowadays, the majority of people have a tendency to move jobs a number of times throughout their career, accumulating multiple pensions along the way. Separate pension pots like these can easily be mislaid or forgotten and, according to the Department of Work and Pensions, £400m worth of pensions have been left unclaimed.

It made sense, therefore, to create a system that, not only provided financial details of the various pensions, but also supplemented the information with useful points of contact. Similar systems are being introduced across Europe, enabling those whose jobs involve them working in different countries to see their pensions in one centralised location. The plans are thought to be at an advanced stage prior to implementation.

Mark Hodson, Associate Director of Omnium Employee Benefits, is keen to see the project succeed for the benefit of clients.

“Most people will have multiple jobs throughout their working life, which is getting longer”, he said. “The need for access to online information is now greater than it has ever been and the thought that this well-advanced project could be kicked into the long grass is very worrying.

“My team spends large amounts of time on behalf of clients working to trace their pensions and enable them to benefit from them in retirement. The pensions dashboard would be a very welcome tool, especially bearing in mind that someone retiring in 2018 may have been accruing pension benefits since the late 1960s – long before computerised records and the internet even existed.”

“If we want to encourage more people to set aside adequate funds to see them comfortably through retirement, we need a modern, easy-to-use system that enables them to monitor and keep track of their nest egg.”

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