‘New tech helped us to secure pension contract’
IMPROVEMENTS in technology have enabled a local company to take on the job of running the States’ new secondary pension scheme when a few years ago it did not even tender for the work.
Sovereign Pension Services has taken on the scheme after the provider that was initially chosen, UK-based Smart Pension, withdrew last year, blaming ‘changes to the commercial landscape’.
That led to Employment & Social Security going out to tender again and Sovereign was the successful bidder.
It was the anticipated size and scale of the scheme that meant the company felt unable to tender originally, said managing director Sean Gillease.
‘We didn’t even actually put a submission forward first time around because we didn’t feel we would have been able to serve that contract,’ he said.
‘The key part to it is technology, and that’s probably why the shift from off-island to on is just taking place, because technology systems investments have progressed during that time.
‘Having invested into systems that can deal with volume, it opened that door for us.’
The winning of the contract will see the company taking on at least seven staff initially.
Mr Gillease said they would help with the setting up of the necessary systems and enrolling hundreds of employers in a short space of time.
Sovereign is talking to the States about streamlining the process.
‘A lot of the heavy lifting is early on and then that work shifts into much more of a client servicing/employee/employer engagement piece thereafter.’
ESS president Peter Roffey said being able to appoint an on-island provider was the silver lining to the cloud of losing the UK operator.
‘The main driver for going off-island years ago was the fact that Smart had a state-of-the-art online platform on which to deliver this.
‘There were also financial considerations at the time, but one of the considerations was that no local bidder was really able to match that.’
He said that while the system may not have ‘every single bell and whistle’ – ‘the fact is that there’s a very usable and acceptable online option now for people who want to interact with their own pensions’.
The fact that it was a local solution would make the system more cost-effective, he added.
