Crown Agents Bank launches EMpower Pensions

EMpower Pensions improves the pensioner’s proof of life checking experience

Crown Agents Bank, the UK-regulated financial service partner of choice for governments, international development organisations, banks and pension administrators, has launched a new pension solution.

EMpower Pensions offers effective, end-to-end pensions management from one easy-to-use interactive platform, including biometric facial authentication, reporting and convenient administration functions.

Users of the Empower Pensions solution will have access to enhanced digital pension services through an intuitive, secure platform. Digital proof of life features will assist pension administrators by verifying that pension payments are being delivered to entitled beneficiaries while mitigating fraud and overpayments.

EMpower Pensions also improves the pensioner’s proof of life checking experience because the process is quick, convenient, and secure. All they need to do is log on to the portal, upload an image of their identification and take a live facial photo selfie—all from the comfort of their own home.

Once this has been completed, the platform applies AI to compare facial biometrics to the photo on the ID document, generating scores for validity and facial similarity. This score provides a confidence level that the two images are of the same person and this is promptly reported to the pension administrator.

When processing pension payroll, administrators can simply instruct payment requirements to the pension portal and Crown Agents Bank will leverage its global network to deliver payments punctually.

Crown Agents Bank’s global banking infrastructure will enable transactions to be tracked in real-time, via the EMpower Pensions portal, providing certainty via reliable reporting capabilities. Furthermore, an intelligent, automated payment management process enables pension administrators to better manage historical and current payments, as well as having the flexibility to upload future dated transactions in advance, making planning and control more efficient.

Colin Digby, head of non-bank financial institutions at Crown Agents Bank, comments: “The introduction of our new pensions platform, EMpower Pensions, offers efficient and secure pensions processing with a much higher level of convenience for pensioners and scheme administrators alike—something that is hard to find in the pensions market, which is dominated by expensive, manual paper-based solutions.”

“The launch of EMpower Pensions marks the latest milestone event in our exciting digital transformation strategy, led by our new CEO Bhairav Trivedi. With EMpower Pensions we are harnessing cutting edge technology, including biometric facial authentication for proof of life services. We are creating more innovative ways of automating financial services to reduce processing costs and time—benefits that we are delighted can be passed on to our pension customers.”

Image: Crown Agents Bank

Mark Dugdale