Highlights:

  • Smart has acquisitions and international expansion on its list of things to do with the money.
  • The startup platform offers users a means of interacting with their savings—additionally, the software streamlines creating and administrating employee retirement plans for businesses.

Startup Smart Pension Ltd. raised a later-stage funding round of USD 95 million to expand the use of its pension management platform, which is currently used by more than one million people globally.

Smart announced recently that Aquiline Capital Partners, a private equity company, led the Series E investment. Participants included Natixis Investment Managers, DWS, Barclays, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, and Chrysalis Investments. Including this round, the startup has received USD 391 million in outside funding.

A software platform is offered by Smart, a business established in 2014, to serve governments, banks, and other organizations that manage pension funds. The startup platform provides users with a means of interacting with their savings. Additionally, the software streamlines creating and administrating employee retirement plans for businesses.

A pension fund operator, like a bank, can use Smart’s platform to make account information available to savers via a web portal or mobile app. Additionally, the startup offers a chatbot as a safety net. Customers can issue commands in natural language to request details about their accounts.

Numerous additional features are also available on Smart’s platform. Customers can update their savings account management information on a self-service basis in addition to checking account information. Major retailers are offering discounts to users in the U.K.

Smart guarantees that managing employee pension plans will be easier for businesses. Through an application programming interface, the startup’s platform can obtain the payroll information required for a pension plan from a company’s internal systems. Additionally, Smart offers spreadsheet upload functionality and a tool for sharing data with a company’s financial advisor.

The startup claims that some of the programs used to manage retirement funds date back many years. Because of this, some business tasks can take hours to finish. According to Smart, its platform offers faster performance, which enhances the user experience.

The startup recently revealed that after growing 65% year-over-year, its revenue in 2022 reached 67 million pounds, or roughly USD 84 million. Smart is currently managing more than 5.5 billion pounds worth of assets. By July, the startup anticipates that figure to reach 10.5 billion pounds.

Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, Co-founders of Smart, “This is a USD 62 trillion global sector in the early stages of being disrupted, and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. We have already reached scale and profitability in the U.K., with Smart Pension now serving in excess of one million savers, and this backing allows us to achieve that scale and profitability in our global markets across the group.”

Smart plans to make several acquisitions in the “near term” to support its growth strategy. Before that, the startup reportedly bought two pension fund managers the previous year. A portion of Smart’s recently closed round will also be used to create new platform features.