Presenting its technological roadmap to journalists recently, Smart Pension said it was in advanced talks with around six schemes, and said it expected many more master trust providers to exit the market as the October 1 deadline for higher regulatory standards approached. But it cautioned that while its proprietary technology model meant it could make a profit on exiting schemes where other providers potentially might not be able to, it would not be able to take all comers because of the procedural hurdles that needed to be passed to successfully onboard schemes.
Smart Pension, which now has 85,000 employers on board, and almost half a million members, has just launched an app that will allow savers to track their pension balance in real time on their phone and allow them to self-select funds and increase contribution levels.
The firm says it will plans to the traditional paper annual report with a daily interactive video featuring talking avatars and animated financial illustrations, and expects other innovations to be announced through the rest of the year. Earlier this year it unveiled an Alexa skill that enables customers with Amazon voice technology appliances to ask about their pension valuation, increase contributions and listen to reports.
Smart Pension business development director Paul Budgen said: “We currently have live conversations with around half a dozen schemes with a view to us taking them over. This is something we can do and have done before, and we will be able to do some more, but I would warn schemes out there looking to exit that there is only so much capacity that we have, so they should get a move on. Getting all your employers registered with another scheme is a big deal – this is not like a GPP transfer.”
Smart Pension MD and co-founder Will Wynne said: “We built the platform for the employer who didn’t want to pay for an adviser. These people were hard to service properly, and we thought the adviser opportunity would be sewn up, as we came to the party three years after everybody else had got started.
“But we then have repeated request from accountants, IFAs and payroll bureaus, asking us to build a system that did not require them to have to pretend to be an employee to use it, so they could upload their entire client base. So we built the technology to allow advisers to upload their entire client book. We have had occasions where advisers have uploaded 1,000 employees in a single go.
“We also have a long list of clients who are with Sage who want to switch, who will be able to do so when our integration project concludes shortly.
At present we are 50/50 advised, non-advised. But the adviser channel is growing. And the adviser channel provides a better quality of business because they have made sure all the details have been correctly ticked off.”
