For the majority of pensions providers, schemes and TPAs using an ‘ISP’ (Integrated Service Provider) service will be the easiest and most cost-effective means to connect to the pensions dashboard.
For operations and IT heads the key question is how much of the work (both in set up and ongoing service delivery) they want to take on board and how much to outsource to an ISP.
The staging of schemes’ individual implementation dates means that providers will have different deadlines by which they must be connected to the pensions dashboard central digital architecture, but clearly, schemes are on a countdown and they need to have a plan of action.
The sooner the technology is in place and tested, the more confident providers will be that they will be ready for their individual implementation date.
Key practical issues and concerns are:
• Data security
• Implementation time frames (given available internal resources)
• The ability to deliver the right data quickly and cost effectively when requests come through; and
• The ability to deliver the data at scale.
Once the dashboard is open to the UK public, and increasingly over time, the volume of requests for data is expected to grow considerably – it will be millions of requests – so the ISP must be built with this in mind. Consequently, an ISP which works seamlessly with the pensions dashboard central digital architecture and has the ability to efficiently handle requests at scale is essential.
An ISP needs to offer options so providers can connect to the dashboard in the way that best suits their business model.
The likely option for most providers will be to utilise a fully managed service. This completely fulfils a citizen’s request for their pensions data, conforming to legislative obligations, while relieving the provider of any input bar regularly updating the data available to the ISP.
Other options are to connect via the ISP to the pensions dashboard central digital architecture and do the rest of the process themselves; or to connect and add a policy find option from the ISP.
For all providers data security is a top priority. When looking at data security, an important point to consider is where and how the data is held by the ISP. This should follow all security best practices and use world-class technology platforms, but also, each provider’s data should be fully segregated from every other provider’s data. This gives operations directors greater confidence around the security of their data.
As the technology provider selected by the Pensions Dashboards Programme to deliver the core elements of the central digital architecture, we are looking forward to seeing pension providers, administrators and ISP providers like ourselves, taking the next steps in the process to bring the pension dashboard to life for UK consumers.”
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