Maps CEO Oliver Morley speaking at Professional Pensions Live
The MoneyHelper pension dashboard is expected to formally launch in the 2027/28 financial year, the Money and Pensions Service (Maps) says.
Speaking on Tuesday (19 May) at PA's sister title Professional Pensions' PP Live conference, Maps CEO Oliver Morley said since schemes began connecting to the pensions dashboards ecosystem last April, there has been "significant" progress, with "more than 60 million pension records" and 1,000 providers and schemes connected.
He said: "This is no longer a theoretical thing that we've been talking about for ten years. This is real infrastructure, and it is operating at considerable scale. We've been working with a group of industry participants, providers, schemes, administrators, and integrated service providers who are building and enabling these connections right across the system.
"Almost all have completed integration testing, most have successfully connected, and importantly, we've taken a phased approach right the way through this starting with those covering the largest volumes, so we could learn, test, and stabilise before scaling further."
Morley noted that while the final decision on the launch of the MoneyHelper dashboard will sit with the government, he said an update on launch plans will be provided around the October 2026 connection deadline.
He added that while there will be a six-month notice period before the launch, Maps' current expectation is for the dashboard to launch in the 2027/28 financial year, with private sector dashboards to follow after.
He said: "We have effectively built the platform, we know it works and we're continuing to work with potential providers and regulators to shape that next phase in terms of commercial dashboards. That depends on everyone in terms of data, readiness and engagement.
"We've made huge strides as an industry together and my responsibility is to make sure Maps is completely ready with a dashboard and a platform that we all want to use, whether as a provider or a customer."
Morley added that with recent research conducted by Maps, which showed around "21 million UK adults do not understand enough about their pensions to make decisions about retirement", the dashboards are not just a "technical tool" but will be about "helping people understand what they've got and making better decisions" as a result.
The dashboard project was first announced a decade ago in 2016. Development and implementation has been slow with various delays during the process, however, the project is heading towards its final stages. It is hoped that giving retirement savers access to all their pension information in one place will increase engagement and result in better outcomes.
Read more: Could dashboards be the answer to Millennial pension apathy?
This article first appeared on PA's sister title, Professional Pensions
