Smart Raises $95 Million to Expand Retirement Savings Technology Platform

Smart has raised $95 million in Series E funding to grow its retirement savings technology platform.

The London-headquartered FinTech aims to continue to expand globally and build on its strong performance in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia with its Keystone platform that powers its Smart Pension business in the United Kingdom, Smart said in a Monday (May 15) press release.

“We have already reached scale and profitability in the U.K., with Smart Pension now serving in excess of 1 million savers, and this backing allows us to achieve that scale and profitability in our global markets across the group,” Smart Co-founders Andrew Evans and Will Wynne said in the release.

Smart was established in 2014 following the rollout of mandatory workplace pension auto enrollment in the U.K., and Smart Pension now serves more than 1 million savers and 70,000 employers, according to the release.

Keystone — the global, cloud-native workplace retirement savings platform that underpins Smart Pension — now powers numerous digital retirement savings solutions around the world, the release said.

“We are on a mission to transform retirement, savings and financial wellbeing,” Evans and Wynne said in the release. “We are the global leader in retirement technology, and our industry-leading platform, Keystone, is being deployed by the biggest, most successful financial institutions around the world. This is a $62 trillion global sector in the early stages of being disrupted, and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that.”

This funding round comes about 10 months after Smart raised $47.5 million in growth financing to expand its market growth, launch new products and make acquisitions.

At the time of its launch, Smart initially set out to make pension auto enrollment easier for companies and their workers but has since branched out to work with financial institutions and governments worldwide through Keystone.

PYMNTS research found that 33% of consumers said saving for retirement is their most important goal, with another 27% citing retirement as an important motivation, if not the most pressing.

However, the numbers dramatically shift when analyzed by financial lifestyle, as only 17% of paycheck-to-paycheck earners with issues paying bills said they are saving for retirement, according to “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report: The Financial Goals Edition,” a PYMNTS and LendingClub collaboration.

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