"We believe that without compulsion and with no incentive for early adoption most schemes will not follow the guideline dates."
The Department of Work and Pensions has confirmed that the Pensions Dashboards Programme's deadline has been pushed back until October 2026.
Earlier this year, DWP announced a "significant delay" to the Programme, admitting that it would be unable to meet the connection deadlines set out in legislation.
In an update today, pensions minister Laura Trott said that "more time is needed to deliver this complex build, and for the pensions industry to help facilitate the successful connection of a wide range of different IT systems to the dashboards digital architecture".
She added: "As part of our reset of the Pensions Dashboard Programme, I am today laying amending regulations with a new approach to delivery that allows us to work more collaboratively with the pensions industry. Rather than setting out the entire staging timeline in legislation, we will instead set this out in guidance which we will collaborate on with industry this year. This will give the Pensions Dashboards Programme the flexibility it needs to ensure this complex project is completed effectively.
"In recognition that the requirement to connect to the digital architecture should remain mandatory, we will include a connection deadline in legislation of 31 October 2026. This is not the Dashboards Available Point – the point at which dashboards will be accessible to the public – which could be earlier than this.
"The Government remains as committed as ever to making pensions dashboards a reality and we are ambitious about their delivery. I am confident that this re-appraised approach will enable us to make significant progress on delivering dashboards safely and securely, enabling consumers to take advantage of their benefits to plan for retirement."
Howard Finnegan, products sales director at Equisoft, commented: "The announcement today that the proposed deadlines for mandatory adoption of the programme have in effect been pushed back two and a half years until October 2026 is a very disappointing one for the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP), for the pensions industry and for the millions of pension schemes members planning for their pensions.
"We believe that without compulsion and with no incentive for early adoption most schemes will not follow the guideline dates. Why would companies incur costs a year or more ahead of when required by the Regulator? This attitude was confirmed by a webinar we ran last week when over three-quarters of those we polled at the event said they would connect to the PDP eco-system six months or less before the regulatory deadline date.
"With the mandatory PDP connection deadline extended we expect most schemes will put their projects on hold, deal with more pressing challenges and restart them within 12 months of the regulatory deadline. This was confirmed by our recent polling when 100% of those surveyed said they have other more significant programmes already conflicting with their PDP project.
"Not only will this mean that all the expertise and experience built up over the past year or more will dissipate as schemes and administrators now have higher priority change projects, including regulatory initiatives such as Consumer Duty but stopping or mothballing a change programme and then restarting it a year or more later will add considerable costs to the overall project.
"We believe this approach will create an implementation and registration capacity crunch in the six months leading up to the regulatory deadline date as during that period tens of thousands of schemes will want to onboard with an ISP, register and connect with PDP eco-system."
Samantha Seaton, CEO of Moneyhub, added: “While appreciative of the complexities of the Pensions Dashboards Programme, the fact remains that people need to be able to retire and to live an appropriate lifestyle that a G7 country can be proud of.
“As we have said before, we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and having a starting point that can be continuously refined and optimised is preferable.
“The largest master trusts and personal pension providers are ready to connect to the ecosystem and they want to get on and focus on the subsequent benefits and we are already working with many of them when it comes to developing their own end to end pensions dashboard offering.
