Workplace pension provider Smart Pension has acquired workplace pension services Evolve Pensions, owner of master trust the Crystal Trust.
The aim of the acquisition is to improve experience and provide efficiencies for the Crystal Trust’s employers and members, enabled by cloud-based global technology platform Keystone, which was developed by Smart Pension’s parent organisation Smart Group.
The Crystal Trust currently has more than 128,000 members and £750 million in assets. Following the acquisition of Evolve, Smart Pension’s assets under management are now £4 billion.
The acquisition further accelerates Smart Pension’s consolidation strategy, which includes using Smart’s Keystone platform to deliver the scale and efficiencies needed to drive better value for scheme members.
Jamie Fiveash, chief executive officer 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. 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. 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.”
Paul Bannister, chief executive officer at Evolve Pensions, added: “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’re very proud to be able to further enhance the outcomes for those we work with through this meeting of minds.”