Money and Pension Service MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard beta assessment report
MaPS's MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard beta assessment report
| Assessment date | 30/07/2026 |
| Assessment stage | Beta |
| Assessment type | Assessment |
| Service provider | Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) |
| Result | Green |
Previous assessment reports
- Money and Pension Service pension dashboard - GOV.UK
- Money Helper Pensions Dashboard alpha assessment - GOV.UK
- Money Helper Pensions Dashboard alpha amber evidence review - GOV.UK
Service description
The MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard (MHPD) is a digital service developed to enable people to access their pension information in a single place online, in a clear and simple way, on a computer, tablet or mobile phone at a time of their choosing. The service will be available across all four nations of the UK under the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) MoneyHelper brand (HelpwrArian in Welsh).
MHPD is intended to support consumer engagement with, and understanding of, pensions and retirement planning.
Service users
A primary pensions dashboard user:
-
is over the age of 18
-
has one or more pensions from UK pension providers
-
is in the accumulation stage (i.e., not yet accessed any of their pensions, or accessed one/some but not all of them)
-
may have lost touch with one or more pensions
Things the service team has done well:
- demonstrated extensive research and iteration to inform key design decisions across the service, including the presentation of pension information and the transition between GOV.UK One Login, the Find journey and the MoneyHelper dashboard
- showed strong and detailed evidence of how they have embedded analytics into their ways of working
- evidenced a well-established insights repository and a robust prioritisation process. Their accessibility testing demonstrated strong representation across a broad spectrum of access needs
- illustrated thoughtful consideration of the data needed from users, including involving stakeholders, including the pensions industry, to reduce friction for users and increase the likelihood of matching users to pensions. The team should continue to monitor this
- presented a sensible plan to ramp up usage. They have the core skills in the team to support this long term, and a clear knowledge management process
- created a robust infrastructure to run the service reliably
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- consider working with a content specialist to carry out some content testing specifically around the National Insurance number entry page, pensions found page and the potential for adding quick links on pages with long-form text
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- continue evaluating whether bespoke dashboard components and visual patterns deliver clear user benefits over established GOV.UK Design System patterns, particularly as the service moves towards live
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- continue monitoring user understanding and confidence across transitions between GOV.UK One Login, the Find journey and the MoneyHelper dashboard as usage increases
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- continue evaluating how bespoke patterns, including iconography, timelines and graphical representations of pension information, support user understanding and decision-making
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- continue testing bespoke dashboard components with users of assistive technologies and users with lower levels of pension knowledge to ensure complex information remains accessible and easy to understand
- continue testing the usability of the end-to-end service, including support channels such as web messenger and other support lines which are not provided by the team directly. The panel noted that the team is planning an internal accessibility audit and a full audit before public beta. It would be helpful to continue distinguishing between users seeking support about the pensions dashboard and users seeking support about other services
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- explore whether anti-personas would help reduce risk. These could be used by the whole team, including user-centred design (UCD), to design security into the service while balancing the needs of legitimate users and protections against malicious actors.
- while the team has put a lot of effort into using a range of tools and audits, they should consider how security can be embedded from the beginning of the project, with involvement from the whole team and in line with Secure by Default principles
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- in future assessments, it would be helpful to see the results of the planned A/B testing and further examples of designing with data
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- consider consolidating the different cloud providers used
- consider the deployment to production approach as it seems unnecessarily complex, requiring multiple approvals in particular. The service manual has good advice on how to keep deployment light without impacting user experience
- provide further evidence at future assessments to demonstrate how the React/Next technology choice meets user and service needs. Given accessibility considerations, ReactJS should be used only where there is a clear user need for it (e.g. asynchronous display). The team explained that React is primarily used on the server side, which may help address accessibility concerns. The panel would welcome further evidence to demonstrate why React/Next is the most appropriate technology choice for this service
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
Open source repositories
MaPS publishes code here: https://github.com.mcas.ms/moneyadviceservice
The MHPD repositories are as follows;
- https://github.com.mcas.ms/moneyadviceservice/mhpd-backend-cda-service
- https://github.com.mcas.ms/moneyadviceservice/mhpd-backend-pensions-data-service
- https://github.com.mcas.ms/moneyadviceservice/mhpd-backend-pensions-retrieval-service
- https://github.com.mcas.ms/moneyadviceservice/mhpd-backend-retrieved-pensions-service
The PDP repository is here:
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- consider improving the use of git commit messages. While the code itself looks satisfactory, commit messages are very short and often refer to pull requests. In particular, there is rarely any explanation of why changes have been made, limiting their usefulness as a record of change
- consider publishing the code on GitHub.com to make it easier for others to find
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- continue reviewing opportunities to align bespoke MoneyHelper components with established GOV.UK Design System patterns where appropriate, while continuing to build evidence for patterns that differ from GOV.UK approaches
- consider contributing to wider cross-government efforts to develop reusable components and patterns, or publish stand-alone components that could be reused easily in other services
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Next Steps
This service can now move into a public beta phase, subject to spend controls.
The assessment report must be shared with govuk-enquiries@dsit.gov.uk
and serviceassessments@dsit.gov.uk
This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a beta banner if applicable. These instructions explain how to set up your *.service.gov.uk domain.
The service must pass a live assessment before:
- turning off a legacy service
- reducing the team’s resources to a ‘business as usual’ level, or
- removing the ‘beta’ banner from the service