DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION BY INTERESTED PARTIES
The page covers who PDOC members will be, what they will do, the benefits of PDOC membership, and what membership might cost.
Who will PDOC members be?
All organisations investing in offering their customers or members a pensions dashboard will want to ensure it is as effective as possible.
So it’s likely all pensions dashboard operators will benefit from being PDOC members.
To date [February 2024], the organisations which have publicly committed to launching a dashboard are:
- MoneyHelper – the Government’s dashboard from the Money & Pensions Service
- Moneyhub – an active alpha dashboard partner to PDP since December 2021
- Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group – announced in a Sept 2023 press release
But this is just the beginning. In Spring 2023, research in the Corporate Adviser Master Trust & GPP Report found virtually all providers plan to offer their own dashboard:
To retain an active focus for PDOC, membership should be available to organisations which intend to offer a dashboard and have commenced their project to deliver it.
As more and more organisations develop and kick off their project plans to deliver their QPDS, there will be more and more firms eligible to become PDOC members.
What will PDOC members do?
PDOC member organisations will field appropriate representatives to meet and discuss a range of dashboards topics (see Aims for a summary list of in-scope topics, or the Topics page for more details).
Members will probably need to field different specialists on different topics: for example, user experience experts on PDP Design Standards discussions, compared to maybe API experts on CDA connection queries.
For continuity, it may be best for each PDOC member to have a central contact who attends all meetings, and who invites their different expert colleagues to different meetings depending on the topics being covered.
PDOC will produce research and policy position summaries, based on PDOC members’ input. Once agreed, these may be published on the PDOC website (see PDOC collateral on the Structure page). These materials will form very useful input for engaging with Government and Regulators, both pre- and post-launch of pensions dashboards.
As part of formally setting up PDOC (see Plan page), a forward look activity plan will be developed so PDOC can understand which topics are likely to covered when.
Benefits of PDOC membership
By delivering its Aims, PDOC will enable the best possible dashboards to be launched, and subsequently enhanced, as soon as possible. So PDOC’s existence primarily benefits consumers, i.e. PDOC exists for the greater good.
But there are also significant direct benefits for PDOC member firms themselves:
- Early influence: Being part of the first wave of QPDS operators, acting collaboratively within PDOC, enables organisations to influence the final Rules & Standards for dashboards, as well as their testing and iteration, and the thinking which will lead to the launch of dashboards from the DAP
- Increased traction: Organisations are likely to have much greater traction dealing with Government and Regulators through an independent body like PDOC as opposed to dealing with them directly (as an analogy, see how closely and effectively PDP works with PASA on data matching and the supply of data to dashboards)
- Feedback efficiency: A very significant amount of user testing of the dashboards ecosystem will be undertaken prior to the DAP, so being able to feed back testing results through PDOC will be highly efficient, both for PDOC member organisations and for PDP and FCA.
Costs of PDOC membership
PDOC member organisations will field their resources to attend discussions and provide input on a voluntary basis, in a very similar way to how PASA working groups operate.
In addition, there made to be a small additional membership fee to cover central costs, such as PDOC website maintenance. As mentioned on the Structure page, if PDOC became part of an existing body, these central costs could potentially be covered by an small incremental increase to the membership fee for those organisations who want to be PDOC members as well.
PDOC’s funding will be discussed, agreed and launched in the setup phase (see the Plan page).