Smart Pension Acquires Evolve Pensions
Posted on 07/17/2023
The UK’s Smart Pension has grown to £4bn after acquiring Crystal Trust and its Evolve Pensions. Operating since 1988, Evolve was an independently owned company managing core services essential for pensions, including DC administration, consultancy, and secretariat services.
Crystal Trust has 128,000 members and £750 million in assets. The acquisition brings a computer system called Keystone to Smart Pensions, that it hopes will bring “scale and efficiencies needed to drive better value for savers, as well as bringing a much-needed leap forward in technology to the industry.”
Jamie Fiveash, CEO of Smart Pensions, 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. Smart’s Keystone platform delivers all of this.”
Paul Bannister, CEO at Evolve Pensions said: “At Evolve we have always put people at the center 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 realized our strategies are aligned and our commitment to our employees is key.”
