Important
Government has announced its intention to legislate to amend the staging timetable (connection deadlines) to allow more time for the technological system enabling dashboards to be delivered. As a result, all schemes' deadlines will be changing.
While you won’t have a confirmed connection deadline at the moment, there is still a lot of preparation work for your dashboards duties. We encourage you to make the most of this time and you can use our checklist to see which actions you should already be working on. You can also stay in touch with us to make sure you receive updates from us about dashboards.
Once connected to the pensions dashboards digital architecture, your scheme will need to stay connected, even if it is a small or micro scheme that is connected on a voluntary basis, unless you fall out of scope of the regulations (eg if all your members become pensioner members).
In line with the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) code of connection, your scheme will need to be available at least 99.5% of the time. You will need to notify MaPS at least five days in advance of planned downtime (eg for maintenance work) and as soon as possible if your scheme disconnects outside of this. If you are considering something that may potentially disrupt connection, such as a change of administrator or IT provider, you should plan this carefully in order to minimise disruption.
You will also need to:
- update your systems when MaPS makes any updates or changes to standards
- keep the scheme’s information on the Governance Register up to date
If you fail to meet MaPS standards and requests, your scheme could be automatically disconnected. This may have regulatory consequences for you and we may take compliance and enforcement action.
Reporting requirements
You will need to report certain information through the digital architecture to help MaPS monitor your compliance with legal requirements and the performance of the digital architecture. This information is set out in MaPS reporting standards and you need to work with your third-party providers to ensure your system is able to generate, record and report the data as required. You should keep these data records for six years.
Some information requires immediate reporting when it occurs, such as reporting related to monitoring the status of the connection.
Some information requires reporting in a daily summary:
- number of view requests received and the time taken to respond to each one
- number of value data items where unavailable and the relevant reasons
- number of value data items that are not provided within the deadline set out in the regulations
Your existing duties to report a breach of law still apply.
Record-keeping requirements
You should keep records of complaints related to pensions dashboards for six years. This should include volumes, the nature of complaints (in particular whether this relates to a missing pension or inaccurate value information) and outcomes. The records should be accessible to MaPS or The Pensions Regulator (TPR) upon request.
You will also need to keep a record of:
- how you have carried out steps set out in TPR or MaPS guidance on connection, or other steps you’ve taken to achieve connection
- your matching criteria
You will need to keep a record of this information for at least six years from the end of the scheme year to which it relates.