PASA has published new Guidance to help pension schemes, providers and administrators resolve Possible Matches arising through pensions dashboards.
Resolving Possible Matches – FAQ Approach, the latest addition to PASA’s Dashboards Toolkit, sets out practical considerations for designing clear, secure and accessible resolution processes.
A Possible Match arises where the information supplied through a dashboard indicates a potential link to a pension record, but further checks are needed to establish whether the pension belongs to the user. Resolving these cases effectively will be important in helping people reconnect with their pensions while protecting against fraud and misidentification.
The Guidance explores how organisations can balance straightforward user journeys with proportionate verification and the capacity to manage enquiries at scale. It covers contact routes, identity checks, communicating outcomes, handling unresolved cases, data protection and monitoring. It also highlights opportunities to improve underlying data quality through the resolution process.
David Fairs, Chair of PASA, commented: “Possible Matches are an important part of helping people find pensions where records are incomplete or details have changed. What happens next will influence their confidence in dashboards and their willingness to stay engaged.
“This Guidance helps organisations prepare for those interactions, with clear processes which support users, protect their information and help them reach a reliable outcome.”
Maurice Titley, Chair of PASA’s Dashboards Working Group, said: “Our 2025 Data Matching Convention Guidance supports industry on how to set matching criteria to flag possible matches, while this new content will help administrators to develop robust processes to bring them to a resolution when savers follow them up, as they are already starting to do in live testing.”
David Brooks, Chair of the Operational Readiness subgroup of PASA’s Dashboards Working Group, added: “A user may be asked to contact an organisation they don’t recognise about a pension they’re unsure is theirs. Administrators need to make that experience understandable and reassuring, while carrying out the checks needed to establish whether there’s a match.
“We’ve focused on the practical questions teams will face, from routing enquiries and assessing evidence to explaining outcomes. The aim is to support proportionate processes which work for users and can be delivered consistently at volume.”
The Guidance should be read alongside PASA’s Data Matching Convention Guidance. It reflects emerging good practice and will be reviewed as testing and operational experience develop.
The Guidance is available at here.
