Smart Pension, which claims to be one of the UK’s leading workplace pension providers, announces its acquisition of Evolve Pensions, a provider in workplace pension services through its master trust the Crystal Trust.

The acquisition will aim to “improve experience and provide efficiencies for the Crystal Trust’s employers and members, enabled by Keystone, the cloud-based global technology platform developed by Smart Pension’s parent company, the Smart group.”

The Crystal Trust currently “has over 128,000 members and £750m in assets.”

This is reportedly “one of the largest master trust transactions of the year so far, and further accelerates Smart Pension’s consolidation strategy.”

Smart’s Keystone platform is ideally “suited to consolidation, as it delivers the scale and efficiencies needed to drive better value for savers, as well as bringing a much-needed leap forward in technology to the industry.”

With the acquisition of Evolve, Smart Pension’s Assets Under Management are now £4bn.

This acquisition is the latest in Smart Pension’s consolidation strategy, “which now includes nine former master trusts including the Ensign Master Trust, the Welplan Master Trust, the Corpad Master Trust and Corporate Pensions Trust.”

Jamie Fiveash, CEO of Smart UK said:

“The acquisition of Evolve Pensions is a further acceleration of our successful consolidation strategy, which has been consistently delivering for a number of years. It is clear that ‘winning’ in this market means delivering better value for savers. Size and efficiency are important for that, but also great technology. Synergies and economies of scale allow value to be passed back both to employers and to members.”

As noted in the update:

“Smart’s Keystone platform delivers all of this. Our joint focus will be working towards merging the Crystal Trust into the Smart Pension Master Trust within the next 12 months, ensuring that members can benefit from the efficiencies and proposition improvements that scale and technology can bring.”

As mentioned in the announcement:

“The team will also help us with our ambitious growth plans which will see further acquisitions, partnerships and new product developments over the coming months. We have been impressed with the quality of the management team and pensions expertise that has been assembled under the leadership of CEO Paul Bannister and Director of Strategy Jessica Rigby. We look forward to welcoming them into the Smart Pension team.”

Paul Bannister, CEO at Evolve Pensions said:

“At Evolve we have always put people at the centre of everything we do. Having seen Smart Pension’s rapid rise to provide best-in-class pension technology and member experience to more than 1.1 million savers in the UK, we realised our strategies are aligned and our commitment to our employees is key. We can bring exceptional value to pension savers across the UK through our heritage in the industry, and Smart Pension’s globally recognised technology, and proven membership experience capabilities. Smart Pension has become recognised as the ‘consolidator of choice’ in the UK workplace pension market for good reason: they create true value for employers and members. We’re very proud to be able to further enhance the outcomes for those we work with through this meeting of minds.”

Operating since 1988, Evolve is an independently “owned company which has grown year on year and specializes in providing the core services essential to the successful running of a pension scheme providing excellent DC administration, consultancy, and secretariat services.”

Crystal was established in 2015 “utilizing the infrastructure created by its sister scheme the Bluesky Pension Scheme, Bluesky transitioned into Crystal in the first week of 2020 to create a single streamlined scheme.”

One of the first master trusts “to be authorized by the Pensions Regulator, Crystal provides workplace pension provision for over 2,400 employers and 128,000 members.”

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