The launch comes two months after KAS BANK became the first to the UK market with a pioneering cost transparency tool, designed to shine a light on the many costs and charges paid by UK occupational pension schemes, which together look after over £2.2trn of pension savings for 39.2 million people across the UK[1].

The pensions market is under greater scrutiny in the face of mounting fund deficits and scandals, whilst scheme representatives face a catalogue of governance challenges, including but not limited to: new regulatory codes and standards, trustee board effectiveness, diversity and standards, monitoring investment performance and more recently value for money and a better understanding of costs. KAS BANK believes that fintech innovation could provide a means to address many of the issues currently affecting the market. 

KAS BANK’s multidisciplinary team is being assembled with talent from inside and outside the pensions sector, representing the best the fintech and data sectors have to offer. By bringing talent from outside the sector, KAS BANK will benefit from an injection of fresh ideas, needed to challenge existing practices and ultimately help trustees to better govern pension schemes through more informed decision making.

The division will be a dedicated team, overseeing ongoing development and refinement of the existing cost transparency tool, as well as creating a suite of tools providing data driven insight aimed at driving real change in the institutional pensions market. 

Pat Sharman, Managing Director, KAS BANK said: “Policymakers and regulators are becoming increasingly focused on improving governance of pension schemes, and as someone who’s worked with pensions schemes for much of my life (including my trustee roles), I understand the drive for better governance. 

“We have a vision of becoming the governance partner of choice for UK pension funds. 
There is a demand for accurate, transparent and timely information, which will assist trustees with more informed decision making, and the launch of our cost transparency tool this year was the beginning of that vision. The dashboard provides trustees with better visibility of their total cost of ownership and captures costs which have been typically unreported.

“We now want to take innovation to the next level and focus on building more pioneering data services for UK pension funds, to drive better governance through more informed decision making. Nobody else is building innovative and unique data solutions to support the UK pension fund industry, and so the underlying goal of our Innovation Division is to make their lives easier.”