UK’s Smart Pension Reportedly Completes Consolidation of Crystal Trust

Smart Pension, one of the UK’s workplace pension providers, has recently announced that the Crystal Trust, acquired from Evolve Pensions this past year, has been consolidated into the Smart Pension Master Trust.

Evolve Pensions provided workplace pension services via their master trust, the Crystal Trust with 130,000 +members, more than 1,400 employers and over £880m in AUM.

Members and their assets have been migrated over “in bulk” to the Smart Pension Master Trust.

The deal is said to have represented one of the “largest master trust consolidations” of 2023.

It reortedly received approval from The Pensions Regulator in October of this year and the transition of all assets was completed in August.

The success of the transition is down to the efforts of the Evolve and Smart Pension teams, ensuring a “smooth” transfer for employers as well as members.

This collab was aided by the technological efficiencies offered by Keystone, Smart’s in-house savings platform which “powers the Smart Pension Master Trust.”

Transferred individuals and businesses now have access to all the benefits offered by Smart Pension, including their app, enabling easy management of pension savings for members and efficient contribution management for employers and advisers.

Savings will now be overseen by the Smart Pension Trustee Board, ensuring continued and independent governance over members’ workplace pensions.

Since this acquisition, Smart Pension has also announced a deal with STM Group, who currently operate the Options Master Trust.

The transfer is expected to bring up to 300,000 members and £545 million in assets over to Smart Pension, which could bring Smart Pension’s AUM past £7 billion and 2 million members upon completion.

Jamie Fiveash, Chief Executive Officer at Smart UK, said that full scheme transitions and consolidations of this size are “not straightforward but it is testament to the quality and experience of our teams, powered by our underlying technology, that this has been completed so effectively.”

They added that assets from the Crystal Trust have now been fully transferred onto the Keystone platform and into their default investment strategy, where we are “focused on delivering exceptional value for our members.”

As explained in the update, greater scale, means more efficiency and better value, ultimately leading to improved “financial outcomes” for members.

Having now completed this transfer, they are pleased to be providing their workplace pension to more savers across the United Kingdom.

Established back in 2015, Smart Pension claims it tops £5bn in assets under management (AUM) and now serves more than 1 million members and over 70,000 workers.

It is powered by Keystone, which is Smart’s global savings and investments tech platform.

Aquiline Capital Partners, Barclays, Chrysalis Investments, DWS Group, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, J.P. Morgan, Legal & General Investment Management, Link Group and Natixis Investment Managers are all said to be investors in Smart Pension.



Sponsored Links by DQ Promote

 

 

Send this to a friend