Phoenix Group has expanded its partnership with technology and service provider TCS to drive the growth of the Standard Life pensions business it acquired last year.
The partnership will see Standard Life Assurance’s pensions and savings products migrated onto the TCS BFSI digital platform.
According to TCS, this will cover an additional 4.2m policies, taking the total number of policies managed by Diligenta, TCS’ regulated subsidiary in the UK, on behalf of Phoenix Group, to nearly 10m.
Phoenix acquired Standard Life Assurance in 2018 and said it wants the technology to meet the needs of its workplace advisers, employers and scheme members.
The latest deal will bring an open architecture platform to the business that will allow it to partner with other experts to develop its workplace offering.
According to Phoenix Group, an example of the benefit of the new platform will be a better use of client specific data and enhanced tools and educational journeys for scheme members.
Susan McInnes, CEO of Standard Life Assurance, said: “We want to ensure we lead the way in meeting the needs and expectations of all our customers in the future, and become an even more innovative, progressive, well run business.
"We believe a partnership model is absolutely the right approach. It enables us to work with a leading global organisation with great expertise and to respond to the dynamic environment that we’re operating in.
“Working in partnership with TCS will support our growth strategy in the workplace market and bring benefits to workplace clients and scheme members.
"It will accelerate our ability to innovate and efficiently evolve our proposition in the future, whilst continuing to deliver excellent customer service.”
The partnership will also see a number of Standard Life Assurance employees transfer to TCS at the end of the three-year transformation as it expands its presence in Scotland and establishes a technology and operational hub in Edinburgh.
Suresh Muthuswami, president of the BFSI Platforms at TCS, said: “Our focus will be to bring the power of digital technologies to further improve customer experience to Standard Life Assurance’s customers including employers, employee benefit consultants and members.
“This exciting partnership builds on our existing substantial presence in Edinburgh to support Standard Life Assurance, and TCS’s growth plans.
"We will be leveraging our presence in Edinburgh to enable Standard Life Assurances’ workplace clients and their advisers to collaborate and envision the future digital transformations to help shape our future offering.”
The partnership between Phoenix Group and TCS has been in place for 16 years.
