ITM and Altus, working together as one of our alpha participants, recently spoke with the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) about their motivations and experiences in preparing to connect to pensions dashboards.
About ITM and Altus
ITM, pensions data and platform technology specialists, partnered with Altus, financial services software specialists to become a pensions dashboard Integrated Service Provider (ISP). Together they have created the solution Pension Fusion. ISPs will play an important role in connecting any-sized provider to pensions dashboards.
Motivation to become an alpha participant
Speaking with Rob Dodson, Head of Propositions at ITM and David Poynton, Product Manager at Altus, a few motivations emerged for volunteering to become participants. These included:
- the need to get the pensions system digitalised and online
- to ensure their own schemes were ready for dashboards
- to share their own expertise and work with others
“Utilising our joint expertise, having business critical systems in the financial services industry and dealing with high transactional processes, felt like a perfect partnership.”
When discussing the preparation requirements for alpha, there were important points raised:
- both organisations built a project team drawn from across their businesses, bringing together the necessary expertise
- building strong communication has been vital, across PDP and the wider industry
“We took subject matter experts from the different divisions of our organisations and created a new dedicated pensions dashboards workstream.”
Helping the industry connect to dashboards
The early involvement from ITM and Altus has helped with the testing of dashboards, as well as reviewing and working together on documents and processes for onboarding data providers, and governance processes.
“Being involved in alpha has meant we will be the first to enable clients to test pensions dashboards. This is a great opportunity for getting a feel for what savers will experience once dashboards are available.”