Pensions Data Project published last Wednesday 12th February 2025

I’m sure many, if not most, won’t have yet seen the Pensions Data Project published last Wednesday 12th February? 

The current report focussed on insights relating to member data matching for pensions dashboards and small pension pot consolidation. 

 

The project has been led by a group of organisations consisting of: Legal & General, Nest, now:pensions, Pension Policy Institute, Peoples Partnership and Smart Pensions. 

The aim is to provide a research database analysing UK pensions that can provide insights for policy making. It also aims to gain a greater understanding of issues such as the proliferation of smaller pension pots, lost pension pots and whether the current contributions are adequate. 

A further, more detailed report is due to be published later in the year which will look at understanding the smaller pots situation. 

 

I don’t want to spoil your reading by giving you the summary, but in essence, if small pots are to be merged, it’s going to be essential that clear criteria is used for the matching, ie: National Insurance Numbers, with surnames and date of birth. Even this cannot guarantee that pots will be merged accurately. It also suggests that Pension Dashboards will be able to confidently provide the number of pensions for an individual. 

The Pensions Policy Institute has indicated there are probably around £3.3million lost pension pots, which amount to around £31 billion worth of assets. Let’s hope this helps to consolidate the data and trace these lost pots. 

 

This data is for the number crunchers, but it’s interesting to get an insight into the research.