London, 25 September 2019: the CEO and founder of online pension provider PensionBee, Romi Savova, has been appointed to the Pensions Dashboards IDG Steering Group.
Today the Money and Pensions Service announced the formation of the Pensions Dashboards IDG Steering Group. Romi Savova, CEO of PensionBee, joins nine others who have been chosen to represent the interests of consumers, fintechs and the pensions sector.
As a leading online pension provider, PensionBee uses technology to help customers find and combine their pensions into one new online plan. With her appointment Romi brings years of experience in helping consumers extract information from their old pension providers, consolidating old pension pots, and engaging consumers digitally.
Romi joins Andrew Lowe, Change and Data Solutions Director at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and Equiniti; Dominic Lindley, Independent; Francis Goss, Chief Commercial Officer at the AHC; Kim Gubler, Chair at PASA; Nigel Peaple, Director of Policy and Research at PLSA; Paddy Greene, Head of Money and Consumer Rights Policy at Which?; Samantha Seaton, CEO of Moneyhub; Will Lovegrove, Independent; and Yvonne Braun, Director of Policy, Long Term Savings and Protection at the ABI.
The Steering Group has been formed to work on the practicalities of establishing pensions dashboards services and making them available for use by the general public. It will support the work of the Industry Delivery Group (IDG) which has been created within the Money and Pensions Service, to take forward the creation of the technology that will enable dashboards.
Romi Savova, CEO at PensionBee commented: “I’m delighted to be joining the Pensions Dashboards IDG Steering Group to ensure that consumers have a louder voice in the creation of pensions dashboards. Collectively we bring years of experience and expertise to the table, and are committed to doing all that we can to ensure the project is delivered successfully for the benefit of consumers.
It is my belief that to achieve the full vision of pension dashboards two concurrent movements must occur: the creation of the Money and Pension Service’s “pension finder service”, which will effectively replace the government’s current pension finder service by providing more accurate and timely information to consumers; and the furthering of the UK’s world-leading Open Finance system, which will extend Open Banking-like protocols to pensions, enabling consumers to share their data with trusted third-parties.
Consumers cannot be kept waiting for decades for a “big bang” approach, and therefore the pension finder service must be delivered swiftly and incrementally. It should give the minimum useful information, so as not to delay the launch, including a policy number, year-end balances, charges in %, charges in £ for the last 12 months and a link to the provider’s website where the consumer can obtain more information. This information, and in particular charges, are already consistent with the information pension providers are required to provide under current regulations and therefore providers must be compelled to provide it in order to deliver a pension finder service that’s fit for purpose.”
