Pensions Minister Guy Opperman has confirmed government backing for the pensions industry’s development of a pension dashboard to help investors keep track of their retirement savings. From Tom McPhail, Head of policy Hargreaves Lansdown.

There is strong support for this initiative, which will help connect savers with their pension investments and ensure they can plan their retirement with confidence.

The priority for the pensions industry is to build widespread coverage of the Dashboard, encouraging as many firms as possible to participate. The government’s commitment, with the planned inclusion of state pension benefits will help to develop this coverage.

Given the technical challenges of the Dashboard, and the demands of Brexit, it would be unrealistic to expect the government to bring forward legislation to make participation mandatory before the project has gone live Hargreaves Lansdown is committed to participating in the dashboard project and will continue to press the government to legislate at the earliest possible opportunity.

With the dashboard not expected to be with us until 2019, anyone who currently has multiple pensions should take the time to get an up to date valuation for each, delaying your planning even for a couple of years can put a dent in your retirement income. Often people are surprised quite how much the company pension they had from a long forgotten employer is worth.