"Think of a future where you can compare your pension pots with the touch of a button."
Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Kirby, is due to confirm the announcement at an Aviva event today.
The Treasury has successfully secured agreement from eleven pension providers - Aviva, Aon, HSBC, LV=, NEST, Now: Pensions, People’s Pension, Royal London, Standard Life, Zurich and Willis Towers Watson. The ABI has also agreed to manage the pilot project.
The Pensions Dashboard is a platform that lets savers see all their pension pots in one place and will help them to plan for their retirement more effectively.
On average, a person can have 11 employers over their working life, which means that they could end up with almost a dozen private pensions by the time they retire.
At the moment there is no way for people to see the value of all of their pensions in one place and research has shown that over a third of people approaching retirement find it difficult to keep track of their pension pots.
The pensions dashboard aims to also provide a link to “lost” pension pots with previous employers and could help release the £400 billion worth of pensions savings that the Department for Work and Pension estimate are currently unclaimed.
It could also prompt people to seek advice as to whether their pension savings are in the best place.
The Economic Secretary, Simon Kirby, said: "Technology, like mobile phone apps, has made day to day banking easier than it’s ever been and it is time for pensions to catch up. Think of a future where you can compare your pension pots with the touch of a button.
"The Pensions Dashboard will unlock a huge amount of information that will help people make the best choices for them and I am delighted that eleven of the largest pension providers have agreed to work together to build a working prototype by March 2017."
CEO of the People’s Pension, Patrick Heath-Lay, commented: "The Pensions Dashboard has the opportunity to change the way the we do pensions, delivering an infrastructure that has the potential to allow people the opportunity to see all their pensions in one place whilst driving greater efficiency within the pensions system. But it must be built first and foremost for savers and have strong, independent, ownership and governance.
"It is great that the government and industry are working together to make this a reality. It is crucial that we all make the most of this opportunity and the industry as a whole embraces the dashboard."
