The ultimate pensions dashboards data readiness checklist

Is your pension scheme's data ready for pensions dashboards? Ensuring the accuracy of your data is critical to the long-term success of pensions dashboards. Our handy checklist is here to guide your through what you need to do. 

Pensions dashboards will connect members with their pension pots, increasing accessibility and helping members plan for their retirement.

That said, what will happen if members don’t get a successful data-match when searching for their pensions? The chances are your customer service and pensions administration teams could face an influx of phone calls, emails and letters from disgruntled members wondering why they can’t find their pensions data via dashboards, adding to the workload of already stretched teams.

It is therefore of paramount importance that pension schemes and providers validate their data prior to connecting to dashboards and on an ongoing basis post staging-date.

To help pension schemes prepare, Heywood’s handy Dashboards Data-Readiness  Checklist will guide you on everything you need to do to be ‘Dashboards Data Ready’, always.

Pensions Dashboards Data Readiness Checklist

Understand the personal data you will receive from the digital architecture to help you match members to their pensions

Each scheme can have separate matching rules, but an example data matching convention is shown below:

• National Insurance Number (Full or First 8)
• Date of Birth
• Surname

Additional fields can be used to improve your matching results where data is out of date, inaccurate or an NI Number hasn’t been provided:

• Alternate Surname
• Alternate Postcode
• Mobile Number
• Email Address
• Forename

Ensure all the member data you hold is digitally accessible

If you currently hold paper records, you’ll need to digitise those to link up with your pension administration platform and the dashboards eco-system.

Conduct an audit, or use a third-party data expert to conduct an audit of the quality of member data you currently possess*

• Date of Birth
• Surname
• Forename
• Address (including postcode)
• Mobile Number
• Email Address
• Living as Stated

Regular screening is essential, once connected to the dashboards, you’re always connected! 

PDP Data Standards: https://www.pensionsdashboardsprogramme.org.uk/standards/data-standards/

*Available in our FREE Dashboards Readiness Report

After receiving the results of your members data audit, take necessary remedial action for correct member data

When you have a complete view of your data and understand what needs to be updated, the next step is actioning this. You may be able to automate this task with your pension administration platform, or alternatively provide the data in a specific format – such as CSV – to interface into your administration system.

Create reporting infrastructure that will provide you with a snapshot of data health and help you plan for ongoing data validation and audit*

Data decays over time so it’s important to keep on top of it, ensuring you’re continually reviewing the health of your records. This is another area where your pension dashboards partner can add value, providing you access to readily available reports on your data such as data accuracy, missing scheme data and membership breakdown. 

Remember, once you’re connected to dashboards, you’ll always be connected. Ensure your data is always dashboards ready’.

*Available in our FREE Dashboards Readiness Report

Understand what data you will need to return to members and by when

You will need to provide pensions arrangement data, administrator data, employer data, value data and signpost data. 

For more information and guidance on matching visit PASA:
https://www.pasa-uk.com/guidance-2/

Consider how you will calculate the value data so that it is provided in line with dashboard requirements – calculated in line with AS TM1 or scheme rules, and sufficiently recent

Speak to your pension administration partner to find out how they will support you to do this. 

Heywood offers this as part of our consultancy services, and this will be done as part of our core ISP offering. 

Heywood’s FREE Dashboards Readiness Report can help you get ready for dashboards. We’ll provide you with a comprehensive overview on the quality of your member data so you can get a clear view of how accurate your member data is and help you formulate a plan for cleansing and updating your data.

For more Pensions Dashboards resources visit our Hub.