Leveraging technology to make retirement planning more accessible, personalised, and future-proof
Every life is extraordinary in its own right — throughout our lives, we dream, learn, achieve, create, and sometimes simply enjoy the moment. Eventually, most of us reach a time when our careers wind down, and we can focus on the things we love most. But as we look ahead to retirement, one question often looms large: How will you spend your retirement?

For many, this question comes with anxiety, and for good reason. Retirement can be a vulnerable time when financial stability plays a crucial role in ensuring comfort and independence. While happiness is not defined by finances alone, transitioning from the peak of your career earnings to a reduced pension income is a challenge many faces. Planning for this phase of life is essential, and the earlier you start the better.

The role of technology in modern retirement planning
At Kidbrooke®, we believe everyone deserves the confidence and security that comes with effective retirement planning, whether navigating this journey on your own or as part of a corporate pension scheme.

Modern technology, like KidbrookeONE, enables financial institutions to offer personalised, high-quality financial advice and guidance journeys, helping clients make well-informed financial decisions about their retirement – digitally and in physical meetings with advisors. This is particularly critical in today’s landscape, where employers and individuals increasingly value transparency and control in their retirement journeys.

KidbrookeONE is an advanced, simulation-based financial analytics platform, which empowers pension providers to create dynamic, intuitive, and educational experiences for individuals and businesses alike. Whether helping clients plan for retirement or navigate post-retirement decumulation, KidbrookeONE makes financial planning more engaging, visual, and personalised.

Let us explore how KidbrookeONE can transform the savings journeys for individuals and businesses.

A seamless experience for private pensions
With KidbrookeONE, private savings journeys are designed to be intuitive, personalised, and transparent. The capabilities of advanced financial analytics elevate every stage of planning for private pensions – from pairing goal-setting with consistent projections according to your institutions’ house views to powering sophisticated optimisation functionalities selecting retirement investment schemes that suit the clients’ situation.

One of the best practices of modern private pension journeys concerns the pre-purchase stage of the engagement. Here the client interactively sets their goals for the desired pension at retirement and assesses the feasibility of reaching them given their age and financial situation. Our platform provides advanced forecasting capabilities, allowing the pension provider to support this stage with high-quality predictions consistent with the internal outlooks on the market development over time and account for inflation, salary increases, mortality risk and other intricacies of this process. These forecasts can help the client visualise and assess the potential outcomes of their engagement with the provider and, should their expectations and needs be met, proceed to the further stages of the journey.

Another important feature of a contemporary approach to private pension planning is personalisation. The accurate assessment of the attitude to risk and sustainability preferences is essential to the determination of a suitable retirement savings plan for an individual, especially for regulated advice journeys. As part of our platform, we offer consistent frameworks for risk and sustainability profiling defining the metrics indicating the customers’ attitudes to uncertainty and their underlying investments’ ESG performance. Our risk profiling methodology is based on a proprietary utility-based approach and the sustainability profiling is compliant with the EU regulations. Depending on a pension providers’ approach to designing their customer journeys, these indicators can be mapped to classic questionnaire-based methods of client data collection or other, more dynamic user experience elements.

There is a wide range of regulatory and business model choices when it comes to building interactive pension journeys. Some of our clients built three different models – regulated private pension advice, investment guidance and self-service journeys – all available within the same seamless experience depending on a customer’s preferred level of involvement in managing their portfolios, and powered by our flexible analytics. Equipped by our forecasting capabilities, our clients could visualise the predicted investment outcomes for each of the journeys – enabling the individual to select the investment alternatives that put them in control of their retirement plan – or allow them to lean on the expertise of the providers’ team of advisors.

Regarding the journeys involving regulated advice models, our platform can provide analytics powering the optimisation calculations allowing the institutions to match the clients with the suitable investment products and options reliably, compliantly, accurately and efficiently. Moreover, these calculations can power monitoring mechanisms allowing clients to stay on track with their pension plans during the investment period. Some of our clients chose to designate the monitoring mechanism as proactive notifications, allowing the individuals to adjust and check on their progress as markets and their financial situations change.

This personalised, user-friendly approach empowers individuals to take control of their retirement planning with transparency and confidence, ensuring they stay on track to meet their goals.

Empowering businesses with modern occupational pension solutions
For businesses, offering a robust workplace pension or savings scheme is about more than compliance—it is a way to manage retirement liabilities, enhance employee satisfaction, retain talent, and align with organisational goals. KidbrookeONE provides best practice tools for financial institutions to streamline their occupational pension offerings.

First, KidbrookeONE allows pension providers to design customisable plans that meet the diverse requirements of employers, including contribution criteria, eligibility rules, and investment options. Powered by consistent forecasting capabilities, the platform models expected outcomes for various schemes, factoring in critical considerations like workforce demographics, salary progression, and inflation. These forecasts equip employers with actionable insights to choose plans that align with their financial goals and workforce needs.

Moreover, employers benefit from high-quality predictions to assess and manage end-of-service liabilities effectively. Our platform’s ability to generate projections helps businesses anticipate costs over time, visualise the impact of market conditions, and make data-driven decisions about their pension contributions. For HR and treasury teams, this clarity translates into better financial planning and long-term sustainability of their pension offerings.

From the employees’ perspective, KidbrookeONE transforms the pension experience by offering interactive goal-setting and forecasting tools. Employees can set retirement goals, assess their feasibility, and visualise outcomes based on their salary, contribution levels, and risk appetite. Through advanced risk and sustainability profiling, compliant with global regulatory standards, the platform can match employees with suitable investment options tailored to their preferences and financial situations.

Occupational pension journeys powered by KidbrookeONE do not stop at onboarding. Our platform’s optimisation and monitoring capabilities ensure that employees stay on track with their retirement goals throughout the investment period. Businesses can enable alerts that highlight opportunities for adjustments as markets evolve or employee situations change. This ensures ongoing engagement and empowers individuals to remain confident in their financial future.

By leveraging KidbrookeONE, financial institutions can deliver occupational pension solutions that strike the perfect balance between personalisation, transparency, and efficiency. Employers gain the tools to manage retirement liabilities with confidence, while employees are empowered to take control of their financial futures through intuitive, interactive experiences. This approach not only builds trust but also strengthens loyalty, making workplace pensions a strategic advantage for modern businesses.

Towards a better future with KidbrookeONE
Retirement should be a time to embrace life’s rewards, not a source of stress and uncertainty. However, achieving financial confidence during this phase requires thoughtful planning, actionable insights, and tools that adapt to the diverse needs of individuals and businesses alike.

Technology plays a transformative role in shaping this future. Platforms like KidbrookeONE empower financial institutions to create seamless, personalised, and transparent pension experiences that simplify complex decisions. For individuals, this means greater clarity and control over their retirement goals, enabling them to set, monitor, and adjust their plans with confidence. For businesses, it offers a robust way to manage retirement liabilities, retain talent, and deliver workplace pension solutions that align with organisational goals.

Ultimately, the journey to a secure and fulfilling retirement begins with the right tools, tailored solutions, and forward-thinking approaches. By adopting advanced technologies like KidbrookeONE, banks and insurers can move beyond traditional offerings to become trusted partners in financial well-being—helping individuals and businesses alike plan for retirement with clarity, ease, and optimism.

Retirement is not the end; it is the beginning of a new chapter. With the right planning and technology, it can be a chapter defined by confidence, comfort, and opportunity.

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