Pensions dashboard takes a step closer to becoming a reality, with prototype in the pipeline

The long-awaited pensions dashboard took a step closer to becoming a reality today, with a potential prototype revealed as being in the pipeline.

In a white paper launched today, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and the Money Advice Service (MAS) revealed that they would be taking the next step in developing the dashboard, which aims to give people a free-to-use overview of their pension position at a glance.

The organisations hope that being able to easily assess their pensions situation will encourage people to save more towards their retirement.

An earlier study in the pensions dashboard project, which involved the pension industry, consumer bodies and government, discovered that having an overview of their pension situation was crucial for getting people to engage more with their savings.

"Given that people are forecast to have 11 different jobs during their working life, the pensions dashboard is a critical piece of infrastructure to empower customers and prepare them for an ever increasing retirement," said ABI director of policy, long term savings and protection, Yvonne Braun.

Caroline Rookes, chief executive of the MAS, added: "We know that online banking has empowered people to engage with their money more regularly. We hope that being able to keep track of their pension savings in a single digital place will ensure that people are fully informed and can make decisions about their future savings in a similar way."

Welcoming the launch of the white paper, Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, said:

People like the idea of a dashboard. Our recent survey revealed overwhelming support for access to pension data in one place with 91 per cent of customers saying they'd find the initiative useful. All pension saving is valuable and the issue of lost pensions will be relegated to the past.

Earlier on this year, consumer interest group Which? urged government to hurry up with the creation of a pensions dashboard, after it discovered that just under half (47 per cent) of employees aged over 50 who have a personal pension plan are not confident about how much they have set aside for their golden years.

A beta version of the dashboard is expected to go live in 2017. In this year's Budget, it was promised that such a dashboard would be available to the public by 2019.