TISA, the financial services' provider association, is to help speed up the implementation of the 'pensions dashboard' set out in the Financial Advice Market Review final report and last weeks' Budget.
Using the TISA Exchange (TeX) model as a template, together with its work on the development of a Digital ID for UK financial services, TISA intends to establish an industry run, not-for-profit facility based on open standards to facilitate the sharing of data and so enable firms to offer customers a pensions dashboard.

The FAMR and the Budget set out plans to establish a 'pensions dashboard' by 2019 to give consumers a simple, one-stop location for all their pension savings enabling them to monitor progress and help them with Financial Planning.

At a TISA organised open industry meeting attended by 60 firms and subsequent TISA Retirement Policy Council meeting, governance and funding were identified as the two key areas that are blocking the development and widespread adoption of the dashboard, said TISA.

Adrian Boulding, TISA policy strategy director said: “There is a clear demand from our members for TISA to step in and help to facilitate the construction of the industry utility necessary to enable firms to create a pensions dashboard. The TeX approach is tried and tested and able to solve the governance and funding problems.

“By adopting a similar industry-wide approach we can help establish a separate, member owned company to deliver open standards, legal contracts and service level agreements that are the essential facets of a governance regime. This will create what is essentially a public utility, that operates for the consumer good, and that cannot be monetised or sold on for profit by industry members. Alongside this TISA is already working with Government and other bodies to develop a digital financial identity for UK citizens.

“This means that at the end of the development process, we will have in place the measures to ensure that the right person has access to the right pension plans. Secondly the open standards and governance facilities will enable pension schemes to share data in confidence, knowing that everybody is following the same set of standards and rules for protecting that data. This will lead to the use of federated databases rather than having to rely on the outmoded central database technology.

“Firms will then be free to develop their own dashboards incorporating tools to help bring the data to life for consumers. We expect plenty of innovation and competition to ultimately deliver a service that will change for the better the way people plan their retirement finances.”

In their recommendations set out in the Financial Advice Market Review HM Treasury and the FCA set out 2019 as a target date for a pensions dashboard. TISA believes that it will be possible to have most of the market adopting the TeX model of pension dashboard well in advance of this.

TISA’s membership comprises over 150 firms involved in the supply and distribution of savings and investment products and services.