On Saturday 31 October, every pension provider and scheme covered by the dashboards regulations has to be connected to the new national system, and you will not notice a thing. There is no email to expect, no login and no app to download. The deadline is a legal one for the industry, it falls three days after the Autumn Budget on 28 October, and it will probably be buried under Budget coverage that week. Public access, through the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard, is not expected until the 2027/28 financial year, which starts in April 2027, and the Pensions Dashboards Programme says the Minister for Pensions has confirmed industry will get six months' notice of the launch date. That gap is the useful part. Anyone who spends an hour on their pension paperwork now will meet the dashboard with their details in order, while everyone else will log in for the first time to a list of half-recognised names and a job they did not know they had.
What actually happens on 31 October
The date is the end of a staged timetable set by the Department for Work and Pensions, which began in April 2025 when the first provider finished connecting. In late July the Money and Pensions Service said around 1,800 providers and schemes were already connected, covering about 85% of the records in scope and bringing in more than 70 million workplace and personal pension records, plus State Pension data. Any provider still unconnected after 31 October should expect to hear from its regulator, either The Pensions Regulator or the FCA.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 31 October 2026 | Legal deadline for in-scope providers and schemes to be connected |
| Not yet announced | Public launch date of the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard, to be set by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with six months' notice to industry |
| April 2027 to March 2028 | The 2027/28 financial year, when public availability is currently expected |
| 6 April 2028 | Normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57 |
| 2030 (target) | Automatic consolidation of small dormant pots under the Pension Schemes Act 2026 |
Connected does not mean complete, and the exceptions are worth knowing about. Schemes with fewer than 100 relevant members do not have to connect at all, and those that want to can only do so voluntarily after 31 October. A pension in a tiny employer scheme may therefore never appear on the screen, which is a good reason to keep your own list of employers rather than treating the dashboard as the final word.
What the dashboard will show, and why to check it
You will prove who you are through GOV.UK One Login, which the programme has confirmed as the identity service, before the dashboard goes looking. There is no central database of pensions behind it: the data stays with each provider or its administrator, and the system asks them for your records only once you have given permission. On screen you should see your workplace and personal pensions next to your State Pension, with values and estimated retirement income where the scheme supplies them. FCA-regulated commercial dashboards are allowed to connect as well, alongside the MoneyHelper one run by the Money and Pensions Service.
The catch is the data underneath. In a trial reported by Corporate Adviser on 24 September, Robert Cochran of Scottish Widows called his own projected pension of £143,000 a year "wildly out", because old defined contribution pots were recorded as still receiving contributions and produced what he described as phantom income. One of his defined benefit pensions was missing altogether, although the dashboard did find a small one from a short stint working in a restaurant. Richard Smith, formerly head of industry liaison at the programme, answered that when an industry exposes more than 100 million records, some of them three or four decades old, data problems are bound to surface.
Treat the first figures you see as questions rather than answers. Compare every line with the latest annual statement from that provider, and if the two disagree, ring the provider instead of assuming the screen is right.
Why your old address matters more than your password
A dashboard must never hand you someone else's pension, so a provider only returns a record when the details you supply match the ones it holds. MoneyHelper's own tracing guide says providers will ask for your National Insurance number, previous names and addresses, the dates you worked for the company and roughly when the pension was set up. Consultants LCP made the same point in a paper on the system: the quality of the name, address and date of birth data that providers hold is of crucial importance to whether the whole thing works. Picture someone who left a job in 2009, moved four times since and changed surname on marriage. The pension from that employer may still sit under a postcode in another city and a maiden name, and a failed match will not announce itself, because the pension will simply be missing from the list, which is why the fix has to happen before you log in and not after.
An hour of homework, in this order
- Write down every employer you have ever had a pension with, including jobs that lasted a few months. MoneyHelper says to cross one off only when you are certain there was no pension or that your contributions were refunded.
- Find the provider's name for each one. Old annual statements come first, then the former employer's HR team, then Gretel, the free tracing service MoneyHelper points to. If the employer collapsed, check the Pension Protection Fund's list of schemes it has taken on.
- Feed those names into the government's Pension Tracing Service to get contact details. It will not tell you whether you have a pension or what it is worth, and the online service needs the name of an employer or provider to work at all. By phone it is 0800 731 0175, Monday to Friday, 10am to 3pm.
- Each provider will want your National Insurance number, past names and addresses and the dates you worked there, among other details, so have those to hand when you ask for a current statement.
- Your State Pension forecast is on GOV.UK as well. The full new State Pension is £241.30 a week in 2026/27, and the forecast shows how close you are to it.
Then do the dull part that makes the rest work: confirm that every provider holds your current name, address and email. Do not wait for the dashboard to find a pension you could trace this evening.
Resist the urge to merge everything
A tidy screen is not a reason to give up a guarantee.
Once your pots sit on one screen, consolidation will look like the obvious next step, and for the small modern ones it often is. The government's Small Pots Delivery Group counted roughly 13 million deferred pots under £1,000 in 2024, holding £4.3 billion between them at an average of about £330, and 23 million under £10,000 holding around £39 billion. Moving a £330 pot from a recent workplace scheme into your current one is a sensible twenty-minute job, provided you have checked its charges first. The older the pot, the more carefully you should look. MoneyHelper lists what to check before moving a defined contribution pension: exit fees, funds that pay a terminal bonus after a set date, guaranteed annuity rates that can beat what you can buy today, and a protected earlier access age, which matters because the normal minimum pension age rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028. Any one of those can be worth far more than the tidiness of a single login.
Defined benefit pensions, the final salary and career average schemes, deserve a firmer line. The FCA and The Pensions Regulator take the view, which MoneyHelper repeats, that most people are better off keeping a defined benefit pension, because the guaranteed income, the annual increases and the payments to a surviving partner cannot be bought back. If the transfer value is over £30,000, the law requires you to take regulated advice before moving it into a defined contribution scheme, and that advice can cost thousands of pounds. Leave a defined benefit pension where it is unless an adviser tells you in writing why you should not.
Tiny forgotten pots are also on the government's radar. The Pension Schemes Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April, creates automatic consolidation of small dormant defined contribution pots under £1,000 into default consolidator schemes. Regulations are expected in 2027/28 and the target start is 2030, so it is no reason to ignore a pot today. If you want the longer argument on tidying up, our earlier piece on gathering up your old pots covers the basics.
The messages that will arrive with the launch
A national tool that finds lost pensions is a gift to fraudsters, and it is reasonable to expect copycat texts and emails once a launch date is public, claiming a pension has been "found" and needs a fee or a quick transfer to release it. The law is already on your side for one version of this. Unsolicited calls about your pension have been illegal in the UK since 9 January 2019, with narrow exceptions for firms you already deal with, and the government said at the time that companies breaking the rule could face fines of up to £500,000. Only MoneyHelper, DWP for the State Pension, FCA-regulated providers and dashboards, schemes regulated by The Pensions Regulator and their connection partners are allowed into the system, so check any adviser or dashboard firm on the FCA's Financial Services Register before giving them a single detail.
A dashboard only displays pensions. It does not move money, so nothing it shows is a reason to transfer in a hurry. Start with the oldest employer on your list, because that is the pension most likely to have your old address on it.