Reports that Pensions Secretary Esther McVey was planning to kill off the proposed pensions dashboard were branded “a huge let down to millions of savers.”
Responding to suggestions today that the Government could be ready to shelve the development of the dashboard the Association of British Insurers (ABI) insisted it must honour promises it had made.

The pensions dashboard is a system which would allow savers to view all of their pension savings, including the State Pension, in a single online place of their choosing.

Given the success of auto-enrolment, which has created nine million new workplace savers and that the average worker will change jobs 11 times, the ABI sees the tool as “essential” to help savers keep track of and manage their savings and plan effectively for retirement.

A prototype pensions dashboard was unveiled in March 2017.

The project was funded by the industry and supported by tech firms working on a pro bono basis, with around 80 people contributing to the work.

The ABI has since provided the Government with a blueprint for how to turn it into a real life service.

The creation of a pensions dashboard was originally announced by the then-Chancellor George Osborne in 2016, who said it would be up and running in 2019.

Lessons from overseas were said to have showed that the best way of providing a comprehensive service was to make participation compulsory, so all schemes get their data up to the necessary standards.

This requires legislation and the scheme would need to be regulated and funded to ensure consumers trusted it and wanted to use it.

The ABI pointed to a number of promises made by Government figures in support of the dashboard, including Pensions Minister Guy Opperman, who wrote in The Times: “I want to make it clear that this project will go ahead.

“The dashboard is a key part of our desire to ensure consumers are able to understand their pensions and plan properly for their future.

“I can also confirm that the Department for Work and Pensions will be the lead department on this project.”

Huw Evans, director general of the ABI, said: “It is vital the Government stands by its promises on the pension dashboard.

“To abandon it would be a huge let down to millions of savers, leaving them unable to find the money they have saved and even exposing them to fraud.

“This is an initiative with cross-party support, backed by consumer groups, which is a win-win for everyone.

“The pensions industry is committed to helping but we need Government involvement to ensure the system works fairly for everyone.”