Tech provider Origo has run a successful pension dashboard test to accommodate 15 million active users of the service.
The not-for-profit operation ran the test after its previous research estimated there could be 15 million consumers accessing and using the dashboard, which is being established to give consumers an overview of all their pension savings in one place.
Origo said its test was able to analyse the performance and stability of the ‘find’ feature at high volume.
With consumer consent, this is the process of the consumer identifying themselves to the system through data like their National Insurance number, and then the system pushing that information across to providers to uncover where the individual has a pension.
Origo chief architect Kenneth May said the firm’s solution had been benchmarked against example test scenarios and factors, including; a 15 million user population, 80% of the users active on the dashboard on a given day; invoking an additional ‘find’ request every 30 days; and 200 pension provider systems in the system.
“Averaged out over a day, this requires a throughput of just over 1,000 transactions per second to deal with incoming traffic from the dashboard(s) and to collate responses from pension providers,” he said.
“We have tested at more than double this rate to ensure that we can cope with typical usage patterns which have significant peaks during the working day.
“Our test results give us confidence that we can reliably achieve, exceed and sustain the required throughput and provide a robust low-latency service.”
Can enable adviser access
Managing director Anthony Rafferty said one of the main concerns of those responsible for delivering the project is the sheer complexity in scaling up the central IT infrastructure to deal with this anticipated volume of consumers.
“Our offering is underpinned by highly scalable world-class technology which orchestrates the finding of pensions securely. It also provides centralised authorisation services to enable dashboard access to the pensions which are found and includes advanced features such as delegated authority for advisers, guidance bodies and other trusted parties.”
He added: “Working in collaboration with providers and industry bodies over the years, as well as the support from our strategic technology partners – MuleSoft and ForgeRock – has enabled us to deliver and successfully test the plumbing of the pensions dashboard.
“For us, the technology is ready for 15 million consumers.”
A paper from the Department for Work and Pensions on the dashboard is expected to be released soon.