Pensions dashboards – The gateway to digital pensions administration

20 November 2025

It’s hard to overstate the impact the pensions dashboards will have on millions of scheme members and retirement savers, who will be able to view all their pension figures side by side for the first time. It’s truly transformational and it really is just round the corner.

Less obviously, what the Pensions Dashboards Programme has already achieved is a shift of perspective across the pensions industry. Trustees and administrators are taking a close look at what they need to do to deliver digital pensions administration. They’re worried about outdated IT infrastructure, data quality and legacy systems, and are keen to take action.

Something has changed.

Up to now, digital transformation in pensions administration has been uneven. We’ve seen some sound developments such as multi-feature online member portals, but these are often the preserve of larger schemes or the result of a concerted drive from trustees.

Seizing the dashboards moment means spreading innovation across all schemes. As David Fairs, Chair of the Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA), said in a recent podcast on digital administration in pensions:

“Some of the large schemes have embraced technology and are using it to really enhance member experience. And I think if they could share some of their experience and then cascade it down into small schemes, that would be really great.”

Will digital pensions administration lose the personal touch?

Across First Actuarial’s pensions administration services team, we all agree that digitisation developments should enhance personal service rather than replace it. We have no intention to remove the personal one-to-one member interactions we’re known for. That may or may not be typical of thinking elsewhere in the industry, but it’s our firm position.

With any pension change, we need to be sensitive to the needs of older people. It’s interesting, though, that many of them – along with the majority of active members – are now comfortable with digital services. The implementation of the pensions dashboards over the next year or so will accelerate that shift to digital. So it’s right to grow our digital offering, but human contact remains important.

Digital pensions administration – Three key challenges

We see three key challenges in the shift to digital administration:

• Data quality
• Legacy systems
• Cyber security.

Let’s discuss them, one by one.

Data quality

Digitisation and data quality go hand in hand. Even with the pensions dashboards – and all the relentless focus of PASA on data in best practices for digital pensions administration – data quality remains challenging.

If data isn’t good enough, then any solution we provide for members will never be usable, especially given the complexities of pensions. Commonplace complications like divorces and the special promises within Defined Benefit scheme rules will continue to present challenges across most schemes.

In the podcast we mentioned earlier, David Fairs referred to a backlog of investment in data cleansing. He argued that data cleaning needs to become a business-as-usual activity rather than a project.

At First Actuarial, we’ve always taken data quality seriously, not least because we are both members of PASA working groups! For example, before any of our administrators do a calculation, we’ll carry out a mini data cleanse for certain schemes so we know we can trust the numbers.

We run mortality screening on a monthly basis, to identify any members who may have died recently. And as well as all verification processes in place for member benefit payments, we’ve been running annual address data quality checks for many years now.

Legacy systems

Legacy systems are another obstacle holding digitisation back. Again, pensions dashboards have forced some schemes to confront the limitations of their IT infrastructure. But many are still struggling to deliver a digital member experience with older systems. What seems to be a digital experience on the surface may in fact be a manual process behind the scenes. And it can be hard to get data in and out of those systems.

Cyber security

If we’re to move towards an end-to-end member experience – beyond relatively straightforward online processes such as change of address or bank details, and retirement quotation requests – cyber security is a standout challenge.

Cyber security could not be more important when making digital payments such as pensions. But there really is nothing like a bit of a human touch in mitigating the cyber risks involved. And that’s another reason why we see digital administration as an enhancement rather than a replacement.

AI-enabled digital pensions administration

No discussion about digital pensions administration would be complete without exploring the potential of AI.

At First Actuarial, we’ve been looking at AI for some time now. We’re particularly interested in what the secure use of AI can do to personalise member communications such as onboarding and retirement videos.

But in common with many industry representatives, we think that caution is needed with AI. We need to be sure that robust due diligence and cyber security measures are in place. We’ll be paying particular attention to data privacy, given sensitivities around the personal information that pension administrators handle. Over and above that, we’ll want to check that it’s genuinely adding value, as we would with any technology.

PASA recently released guidance on the use of AI in pensions administration, in which it highlighted both the opportunities and risks of AI, and emphasised that high-quality data is a precondition.

Back to the podcast on digital pensions administration, Jonathan Hawkins, PASA Director, listed a number of appropriate scenarios for the use of AI:

• Personalising member communications
• Checking outputs
• Automating routine areas of administration.

He argued that those use cases will become “more interesting and more nuanced as we get into the AI space and we start to understand what works well and what works less well”.

This chimes with our concerns about complexities such as the spouse pension of a member who has been married three times. We need to use our administration expertise to identify and test potential pitfalls while keeping an open mind to the potential of AI as it evolves.

How to prevent trustee overwhelm

Faced with all the changes on the horizon, combined with the stresses and strains of existing workloads, how can today’s overwhelmed trustees set priorities for digital transformation in pensions administration? And where will they find the budget and resources?

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is playing an exceptionally useful role in supporting the transition to digital pensions administration. In reality, the reason why pensions dashboards are getting off the ground is that schemes are legally required to comply with deadlines.

TPR has been taking a closer look at the use of technology in administration, and there are further data quality regulations in the pipeline. All these developments are laying the foundations for further digitisation.

For data testing, for example, TPR has been pointing to the Government Data Quality Hub, which recommends testing against six dimensions of data quality:

1. 1. Accuracy
   2. Completeness
   3. Uniqueness
   4. Consistency
   5. Timeliness
   6. Validity.

Next steps for digital transformation in pensions administration

Over and above their pensions dashboards obligations, what is the one thing that trustees should be doing right now to open up the potential of digital transformation in pensions administration?

From a trustee perspective, one invaluable change would be to position administration at the heart of every trustee meeting, and cover every significant data and administration issue. That way, administrators could act as a strategic partner by adding their expertise to discussions on pension scheme digital transformation.

Besides that, we believe that it’s essential to continue to provide personal care for members, and our feedback really bears that out. We get positive feedback on the digital elements of member experience, which direct members to our skilled administrators at appropriate points. And that’s exactly how we plan to move forward with digital pensions administration.