Smart Pension is an innovative UK pension provider. As a relatively new player in the market, they knew needed ways to compete with huge FTSE 100 listed companies offering similar services.
Switching to GoCardless
Smart Pension considered a number of options for collecting client payments, but decided Direct Debit was the best one for keeping payment costs low. The founders needed a system that was simple to set up and offered automation capability. Smart Pension also wanted to avoid the hassle of chasing small amounts of money from vast numbers of customers. The system had to work smoothly with no manual intervention from the team. Smart Pension also needed to integrate the payment provider into the existing solution, so it was important to find a credible partner.
We didn’t want to spend time working on integrating a tech solution only for the partner to go bust. GoCardless is a big success story so no concerns there."
The benefits
The simple GoCardless API was easy for Smart Pension to integrate into the existing system, via plug and play integration into the Ruby on Rails platform. Smart Pension were up and running with GoCardless in under a week, with help from GoCardless support, which ensured existing clients were unaffected by the transition.
Using GoCardless ensures our transactions are 100% accurate, easy to setup and manage for our clients. It's also significantly cheaper when compared to credit card or visa card equivalent transactions."
The future already looks bright for Smart Pension, just 12 months after it started operations. In July 2016, the FTSE 100 firm Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), once a competitor, decided to invest in Smart Pension. This new venture is a big win that will give small pension schemes access to a range of LGIM DC pension funds specifically designed for use with the Smart Pension product.
