Dashboards done well – behind the scenes of a successful project

As schemes across the industry move closer to connection, trustees are increasingly turning their attention to how best to prepare.

For schemes with complex arrangements — such as multiple administrators or legacy AVC providers — the path to pensions dashboard readiness isn’t always straightforward. Having recently supported a large pension scheme through a successful pension dashboards connection project, we’ve seen first-hand how effective project management, governance and collaboration can make all the difference.

Here are a few lessons learned that might help others navigating similar challenges – and the principles are relevant for all dashboard connection projects, however large or small, straightforward or complex your own scheme’s arrangements might be.

Key lessons learned

Set up a focused working group

Particularly for larger or more complex schemes, establishing a dedicated dashboards working group early in the process is crucial. Bringing together all parties — including administrators, governance leads and technical experts — helped us maintain momentum and create a forum for clear decision-making. This avoided overloading already full trustee meeting agendas and allowed decisions to be made more efficiently, while ensuring key updates could still be reported back to the full Board in a streamlined way.

Governance documents are your friend

We developed a central dashboards governance document that was kept updated between meetings to capture key decisions, actions and progress across workstreams like data cleansing and calculation readiness. This gave all stakeholders a single source of reference and helped build confidence in the project’s robustness.

Communication and transparency underpin success

When working with more than one administrator, communication is key. We supported the Trustee in facilitating discussions between the different parties on decisions such as agreed illustration date, connection timing and approach to data matching. Tackling these items collaboratively and early helped avoid roadblocks later on. Open lines of communication with straightforward meeting agendas, clear ownership of actions and a commitment to transparency, played a major role in the project's success. Keeping everyone aligned on project progress ultimately enabled a seamless connection.

Proportionality is key

Finally, a quick word on proportionality. It's easy to over-engineer governance processes, particularly at the start of a new regulatory project. We initially proposed monthly working group calls, but it quickly became clear that — following the early phase of decision-making and setup — the project was progressing well with limited intervention. We adapted by moving to regular email updates, using our central governance tracker to maintain visibility. Being flexible and scaling the level of oversight to reflect project needs ensured the Trustee stayed informed without creating unnecessary work.

This project proved to us that dashboard readiness doesn’t have to be painful! With the right governance, tools and communication in place, schemes can manage the process efficiently. Our experience shows that early structure and clear collaboration between all parties — no matter how complex the scheme’s setup — is key to getting dashboard connection right.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can support you on your dashboards journey, feel free to get in touch with one of our experts.