Pensions dashboards expected to open to the public from summer 2024 at the earliest

Pension schemes began joining the pensions dashboards system in stages from spring 2023, but the public will not have access to dashboards until summer 2024 at the earliest, according to Which?¹. The dashboards do not yet exist¹.

The government's proposed pensions dashboards are intended to let people view up-to-date details of their pension pots, and the State Pension, in one place online, and could help reunite savers with lost pots¹. Schemes are joining the system in stages, starting in spring 2023¹.

The context is a large stock of unclaimed money. Around 2.8m pensions are considered "lost", an increase of 75% over four years, according to the Pensions Policy Institute and the Association of British Insurers, with the average lost pot worth £9,470¹. A survey of 2,000 members of the general public in November 2022 found that, of those who said they had a workplace pension, 55% were confident they knew how many pots they held in total and 18% were not confident¹. Among those with a defined contribution pension, 42% knew the percentage of salary they and their employer contributed, 40% knew the exact amount and 31% knew what their pension was worth¹.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions launched a consultation on small pension pots, applying to England, Scotland and Wales, running until 27 March 2023¹. Occupational pensions are devolved in Northern Ireland; the consultation document says it expects Northern Ireland to make similar provisions, but gives no detail on what these are or when they might come into force¹. Two options under consideration are a default consolidator, where small pots would be transferred automatically into a scheme, and a "pot follows member" scheme, where a pot would follow an employee to a new job and move automatically into the new employer's scheme¹.

Why it matters for households

People who have changed jobs several times may hold pots with former employers and may not know how many they have or what they are worth¹. Until dashboards open to the public, no earlier than summer 2024, there is no single online place to see all pots and the State Pension together¹. In the meantime, tracing a pot depends on old correspondence, asking a former employer, or using the government's Pension Tracing Service, which searches a database of more than 200,000 workplace and personal pension schemes and is free to use¹. The small pots consultation concerns deferred pots, which are those left behind when someone leaves a job; any change to how they are consolidated would follow the consultation, which closes on 27 March 2023¹. The rules on when a private or workplace pension can be accessed are separate from the dashboards timetable and are unchanged by it¹.

What happens next

The small pots consultation runs until 27 March 2023¹. Schemes continue joining the dashboards system in stages from spring 2023, with public access not before summer 2024¹. No further dates for dashboard availability have been reported¹.