Smart has launched Keystone by Smart, a new technology platform for the retirement savings sector.
Keystone by Smart will now be made available to corporate and public-sector clients throughout the world’s pensions business. Governments at the federal, state, and local levels, banks, pension providers, asset managers, trade associations, and affinity groups will all have access to its Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering.
With a single global code base, Smart says Keystone is a flexible, agile, and cloud-native platform that also delivers radical efficiency to major data migrations. As a result, consolidation and M&A initiatives that would have taken years with traditional systems are now feasible in a matter of weeks or even days.
Keystone operates as a stand-alone platform for workplace retirement savings and integrates with payroll and HR systems in addition to retirement software and other financial services. Employers and employees can both save time and money by easily converting existing pensions service users to Keystone’s platform.
Keystone can be used with a variety of retirement savings schemes all across the world thanks to its adaptability. It is intended to address the needs of savers in any language and any currency while keeping up with the rapidly evolving pensions legislation.
Smart Pension’s Master Trust in the UK, which oversees more than £2bn in assets, is already supported by Keystone, according to Smart. More than 1 million investors and 70,000 business plans are represented on the platform, and it is actively onboarding many more retirement savings options in collaboration with financial institutions throughout the world. Keystone has the potential to serve more than 8 million people in the near future thanks to these agreements.
Smart Group CEO and co-founder Andrew Evans says: “Keystone by Smart enables financial services organisations to serve their clients and customers better and faster. It allows savers to connect to their money and manage their pensions in real time.
Keystone will also help corporate and strategic investors, who see opportunities to create efficiency in the global market but haven’t previously had the tools to make it happen. We are making a technologically fragmented industry more user-friendly for everyone.”
Smart Group MD and co-founder Will Wynne says: “Much of our industry is built on decades-old technology, which holds back millions of savers across the planet. Our experience in leading the auto enrolment revolution in the UK gave us an early head start in understanding that, and now we’ve built a platform to help savers and providers worldwide.
“Keystone by Smart makes pensions easier and cheaper for organisations everywhere to provide. It also gives savers the experience they’ve come to expect from best-in-class ecommerce sites and online banking.”
Octopus Group CEO and co-founder Simon Rogerson says: “Keystone is a unique piece of technology: a platform capable of transforming the sleeping giant of the fintech world – the $62 trillion global retirement savings market. It’s an area where the entire industry is crying out for a modern technology platform, to deliver better outcomes for governments, financial services organisations and their customers and citizens around the world.
“With already more than a million savers on the platform today and a trajectory to support tens of millions of users in the near future, Keystone will be as transformative for pensions and retirement as Octopus Energy’s Kraken platform already has been for energy.”