Global savings and investments technology provider Smart, a division of UK-based Smart Pension, continues to refine its stateside strategy since launching in August 2020—focusing on four key areas to manage its growth responsibly.
While the company is rapidly expanding its presence, it isn’t hard to control, said Grant Chamberlain, Smart’s Chief Strategy Officer of the U.S. subsidiary, crediting the support and resources provided by its British parent.
“The first area of focus is what we call closing the coverage gap,” Chamberlain explained in an interview at the 2022 Wealth@wor(k) conference in Las Vegas on Monday. With the SECURE Act as a backstop, we want to be able to offer full-plan solutions or be part of the full-plan-solution ecosystem.”
Claiming it’s a different strategy than most of its digital competitors, complete market disruption isn’t a priority. Smart prefers to concentrate on bringing “newer, better, greater technology solutions to the market and partnering with existing providers.”
Chamberlain and Daniella Moiseyev, Head of U.S. Marketing, mentioned a collaboration between Smart, Finhabits (a fintech provider for Latinos), and Transamerica as an example.
The second area of Smart’s focus is retirement income.
“We view retirement income as a really important space,” he added. “Smart has technology called Smart Retire that helps participants take their balance and figure out how to use that in retirement as income. One of the reasons for the acquisition of Stadion was we believe that it should be delivered through a managed account and give you the QDIA eligibility and discretion to make certain decisions. Closing the acquisition of Stadion in March was a major piece of that pillar.”
The third factor is more of a future priority, but he mentioned it nonetheless—alternative assets and technology’s role in making them more widely available.
The fourth and final area of focus is personalization—which also involves technology.
“Technology has a significant role to play in helping bring outcomes to consumers that ultimately help them achieve their objectives,” Chamberlain said. “While a lot of our solutions are focused on the institutional space right now, we try to deal with closing off the points of friction, as we call it. Our longer-term strategy is about delivering more and better personalized solutions through technology and our partners to the end consumer.”
Citing proprietary research, Moiseyev added that Smart’s technology allows a plan sponsor to start a plan in roughly seven clicks and 10 minutes.
“That’s one of the things that we believe really sets us apart,” she concluded. “We run focus groups all of the time of actual users and get their feedback. It was an incredible experience to build something that was actually based on user feedback, not, ‘Oh, we know what they need.'”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
