Smart Pension appoints DC specialist as independent trustee

DC governance expert Anna Eagles has been appointed as an independent trustee by fast-growth workplace pension provider Smart Pension.

Anna, a trustee director at professional services provider Law Debenture, is a technical DC governance specialist.

Anna said: "Given where Master Trusts are going, a deep technical understanding of DC, including wind-up and rectification work, will be vital as Smart Pension moves to absorb smaller schemes."

"I'm very excited to be working with Smart Pension. Many firms talk about their technology when in reality there is very little evidence that it is being used in any meaningful way. Smart Pension uses technology dynamically, as an implicit part of its business model. This is clearly the way forward, making pensions affordable and accessible to everyone. One of the things that has impressed me most is the fact that Smart Pension is using tech intelligently while recognising the need to apply pension expertise and rigour to make it work."

Andrew Evans, co-founder and CEO of Smart Pension said: "Anna"s DC experience will be vital to ensure that we are on top of technical and governance issues as we continue to grow apace. Her DC skills will be an invaluable asset as the industry moves towards consolidation, something we are keen to lead the field in."

Anna's experience includes handling the winding-up of a DC arrangement with many investment options including with-profits funds; feasibility analyses of wind-ups of legacy DC arrangements with unit-linked and with-profits investments and bulk transfers of DC to Master Trusts.

Anna is a pensions actuary by background and a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, with 22 years' experience advising trustees and corporate sponsors across DC, DB and hybrid schemes. Before joining Law Debenture, she was with Willis Towers Watson Ltd.

Smart Pension now sees a business join every seven minutes and welcomes 1,000 new members a day. It takes care of workplace pensions for 75,000 employers and 400,000 members.

The firm's award-winning, highly automated platform harnesses time-saving applications to allow fast, seamless auto enrolment with a sign-up and onboarding process that takes just a few minutes from start to finish. It is free to employers and has an AMC-only charging structure for members that is transparent with no upfront or hidden costs.

It is MAF-accredited and in June 2017 it was named as Fintech Innovation of the Year and overall winner in the Digital Leaders 100 Awards.

It has an average score of 4.4 out of 5 in Google reviews from its customers.