Pensions Dashboard user research

The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) was tasked by government to create and run a MaPS Dashboard. This aims to help individuals to access their pensions information online, securely and all in one place, and enhances the service MaPS offers to help people with their pensions and plan their financial future.

A key consideration for the MaPS Dashboard is that once people are able to see what they have in their pensions, this will trigger questions. This means there is a need to help them better understand what they have and how they can use that information to help them plan for and in later life and, importantly, help avoid potentially detrimental decisions.

MaPS commissioned PwC Research to carry out qualitative research to understand and explore:

• attitudes, behaviours, needs and expectations of potential dashboard users
  
• what additional guidance and support users need beyond a view of their pensions data
• what consumers would want to do upon seeing dashboards to inform our customer journey design, and
• how open users would be to creating a profile.

This research is separate to, but largely complementary to the qualitative research commissioned by the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP)Opens in a new window which focused on understanding likely system requirements and what information potential users would look for and find usefully generally within their pensions dashboard.

Examples of user feedback:

This would really help me in just giving me some information, advice and guidance on how I can best plan for my future.

User profile: male/24yrs/starting out/low engagement

I’m a bit late to sorting my pensions so any sort of advice would be amazing to help me. And it’s such a process to get onto pension sites or check your state pension, to just have them all in one place would be amazing.

User profile: female/51yrs/saving/low engagement

It’s OK [not being matched to all pensions] because there is more information in front of me than I actually know now.

User profile: female/61yrs/thinking/low engagement

We encourage potential dashboard providers, pension providers and others with an interest in pensions dashboards to view the full report, along with the PDP research.

• There is a high likelihood that a pensions dashboard will have something to offer those with different levels of pension engagement – providing total pension income, state pension view and reconnecting users with ‘lost’ pensions.
• Even individuals considered to be more highly engaged with their retirement planning have gaps in knowledge and will benefit from the dashboard and supporting guidance – especially in later stages of their pension journey.
• Clear explanations and the ability to set up notifications would help to mitigate disappointment at some pensions not being available on the dashboard.
• Users value the independence and data security reassurances of the government link.
• Users have a preference to create a login with the dashboard provider or use the GOV.UK verify login if they are required to log in to use a dashboard service.