IT & Business Strategy Review UK Independent Pensions Provider

Client Challenge

One of the UK’s largest independent financial services companies operated as one company in name only. The Group consisted of pension administration companies, property legal services and a FinTech company all operating under different brands.

Some of the main issues included, inter alia:

  • The pension administration arm of the Group was made up of several different organisations that had not integrated from a systems, infrastructure, process, and culture perspective. In essence, all of these different organisations were providing different customer experiences
  • The FinTech arm of the Group had very few synergies with the other parts of the business. They provided commercial software for pension administrators and wealth managers, a small outsourcing operation providing pension administration, and some IT consultancy services to financial services companies
  • The operating model did not support scalable growth. The different geographic locations of the Group administered the same product on different systems, to different risk appetites, and with different approaches as to what a “good service” looks like. In addition, the reliance on manual workaround and managerial oversight restricted scalability
  • The business strategy, mission and vision were not clearly stated, articulated and communicated with the wider organisation
  • The change roadmap was being prioritised in the absence of understanding key customer journeys across the multiple pension administration companies and products. As a result, gaps in propositions were not being addressed, leading to challenges in improving organic growth and delivering a satisfactory service

What We Did

TORI conducted a 5-week engagement to assess the systems, business processes and operating model, reviewing 100+ documents and interviewing over 25 stakeholders through workshops and 1-2-1 interviews.

The purpose of the review was to provide an industry perspective and garner insights into best practices pertaining to the viability of the Client’s Business and IT strategy to provide confidence in effective execution and highlight the impact on the administration and operations functions (and their related efficiencies). During the engagement with the Client, the following activities and reviews had been completed:

  • Reviewed key business processes affected by the IT strategy (including Architecture), System Consolidation and decommissioning, and made recommendations on process improvement and efficiency gains
  • Based on the outcomes and findings, the team reviewed the optimal Target Operating Model to support the future system and business process landscape
  • Produced a business case to support the required investment and benefits of re-engineering the operational processes, operating model and system decommissioning which would impact service and vendor contacts
  • Recommended a future programme structure to execute the detailed IT strategy and update the business case including the appropriate and pertinent skillsets and capability profiles to deliver it
  • Analysis and evaluation of the current state IT strategy execution (transformation) including people, processes and governance
  • Carried out a diagnostic review with key stakeholders to comprehend day-to-day, BAU operations
  • Identified gaps in the programme plans and capabilities to build confidence that the transformation function will deliver timely and quality initiatives

Outcome & Results

Created a thorough and detailed report which included, inter alia: 

  • Key observations from the review
  • Recommended next steps, including immediate quick wins
  • Identified areas of focus to ensure remediation action was taken as necessary
  • Provided a roadmap for implementing the required business strategy and IT operations change
  • Put forward a customised Target Operating Model to realise synergies gained by implementing the TORI recommendations

In addition TORI identified areas for cost optimisation which could be diverted to improve the overall strategy and operations which included:

  • A 20% saving by consolidating identified management layers
  • £1.6m-£2.1m saving (conservative) by improving property administration
  • Further savings from the robust implementation of RPA would deliver £1.5m – £2.5m by the end of 2023
  • Further benefits would be anticipated from improved processes on a single platform 

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