SIPPMay 24 2019

Digital Sipps boost Embark profits

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Digital Sipps boost Embark profits

Personal pension administrator Embark Services saw profits increase by 107 per cent following growth in its digital business last year, according to its financial results for 2018.

Embark Solutions, which is owned by Embark posted a pre-tax profit of £290,000, up from £140,000 the previous year while client numbers increased 15 per cent to 2,028.

The company said the reason for the increase was partly due to its transition from a self invested personal pension and small self administered scheme administrator to providing more digitally-executed retirement services.

Growth in the company’s digital business as well as a decline in complex pension products resulted in an increase in client numbers.

The use of financial technology company FNZ to provide platform technology coupled with support from its parent company Embark also helped Embark Solutions reduce its operations costs.

Paul Downing, managing director of Embark Services, said: “2018 was a solid year for the business. Our diversification strategy continues to be a primary driver of our performance and we see this progressively accelerating across the medium term.”

Embark Solutions has said profit and client number growth had continued into the first quarter of 2019, mainly due to the company providing a digital Sipp for private bank RBS Coutts.

Phil Smith, chief executive of the Embark Group, said: “We are very pleased with the progressive performance improvements and underlying growth at Embark Services Limited.

“It remains a cornerstone of the Embark strategy, and is rapidly becoming a leading provider of digital pension administration in the UK.”

Embark also released results for its other subsidiary, EBS Pensions this week.

According to the company’s results for 2018, EBS posted a pre-tax profit of £1.55m after making a loss of £0.12m in the previous year.

Client numbers also increased 89 per cent to 31,452 in the year.

It stated this was partly due to the acquisition of the Option Sipp in late 2018 which significantly increased the size and reach of the business.

amy.austin@ft.com

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