Millions of pension savers get huge boost with 'revolutionary' £300m project

The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP), which has cost at least £289 million so far, involves developing an online tool where savers can see all their pensions in one place. At the end of this month, most larger pension schemes, including most FCA-regulated schemes, will have to connect to the dashboard.

Legal & General (L&G) said it had become the first to successfully connect to the ‘live’ pensions dashboards system ahead of the 30 April deadline, which has been set for the largest pension companies.

Legal & General which runs pension schemes for over 5 million Brits said it had finalised its connection in line with the staging timetable.

Approximately 3,000 pension schemes and providers are expected to join L&G and connect to the system in stage over the next 18 months.

L&G, along with technology firms Heywood and Pension Fusion, passed the final stage of the connection process last month.

Concerns about the project which has been subject to years of delays having originally planned to launch by 2017, have been voiced by pension experts with some concerned that the data held by many pension schemes was incorrect and out of date.

Fraudsters are believed to be 1,000 steps ahead of the pensions industry and will "easily" be able to exploit a combination of poor and out-of-date data with the availability of personal information on social media, an expert has warned.

Lisa Lyon, managing director at pensions specialist Target, said fraudsters were "1,000 steps ahead" of the pensions industry and they were already combing over LinkedIn and Facebook for potential victims when pension dashboards go live.

Oliver Morley, chief executive of the Money and Pensions Service (MAPS), which runs the Pensions Dashboards Project, said: “The connection of the first pension provider is a testament to the hard work and dedication across industry, government and the regulators. It’s important that providers and schemes keep going with their preparations ahead of connection in line with guidance.”

He added that MAPS was set to begin user testing with its own MoneyHelper pensions dashboard this summer.