PRESS RELEASE: Festina Finance Expands into the UK Market

23 June 2025

Festina Finance, a leading European provider of pension administration technology today announced its expansion into the UK market.

Following several months of groundwork and local engagement, the company is now fully operational — delivering its next-generation Festina Life and Pension Platform to UK pension scheme administration clients across Defined Benefit (DB), Defined Contribution (DC), Collective DC (CDC) and life insurance.

With a proven track record in Denmark and the Netherlands, the platform is on track to support over 8 million members and more than £700 billion in assets with clients including PensionDanmark, and the largest pension provider in Europe, APG.

The Life and Pension Platform is a purpose-built, cloud-native administration system designed to streamline operations, allowing clients to focus on member value and strategic objectives.

Its three core elements are:

• Modular, pace-layered architecture – Built on Gartner’s pace-layered methodology, the modular technology integrates into existing ecosystems and is delivered at the client’s pace and rate of change, creating the ability to avoid big bang digital transformations.
• No code configuration – Clients can create and modify pension schemes, fees, and rules entirely through configuration — no additional coding or software development required.
• Strategic and operational freedom – the platform frees clients from the constraints of legacy systems, allowing them to focus on what truly matters: delivering commercial strategy, regulatory compliance, and outstanding member value through relentless proposition and product innovation.

Dan McLaughlin, UK Country Head at Festina Finance, commented: “From day one, the architecture of the platform has been intentionally designed to be configured for new markets. Therefore, entering the UK market was a natural and important step in our evolution as a company, and we do so with partners including Netcompany, an investor in Festina Finance. Over the past few months, we’ve quietly been laying the groundwork — listening, collaborating, and adapting to local needs. Today, we’re proud to pick up the pace of our UK roll and bring our proven, transformative and trusted administration technology to help build a more agile and responsive pension ecosystem in the UK.

“Financial technology systems should empower rather than restrict. For UK schemes, dealing with legacy systems under increasing regulatory pressure, our platform will enable real agility, simplification, megafund scale and future proofing. Our clients can adapt products, processes and policies quickly and cost-effectively — whether that’s designing a new CDC scheme or tweaking existing DC or DB scheme rules — without long delays or costly change requests.”

McLaughlin continued: “The UK pension landscape is at an inflection point, with increasing complexity and member expectations colliding with legacy tech constraints, we want to break that cycle with a new era of pension innovation — where providers have the tools to deliver efficiently and members get the experience they deserve.

“Ultimately, our goal is to give pension funds and administrators the freedom to focus on what matters most: strategy, value creation, and member experience — not workarounds, delays, or system limitations.”

 

ENDS