Carey Pensions

Pension provider proactively addresses GDPR compliance with SmartVault

Carey Pensions is an independent pension administrator and professional trustee company that has been providing specialist pension services and products to the UK and international markets for 20 years.

Carey Pensions administers in excess of £1.7 billion in pension arrangements across a range of corporate and personal pension schemes serving professional advisers and their clients, workplace pensions, auto-enrolment and third-party administration. The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) created an immediate need for Carey Pensions to find a secure way to store and send the financial and other sensitive information that the company manages during the course of its transactions.

Chris Brodrick, Head of Corporate Service and Operations at Carey Corporate Pensions UK, took the lead in evaluating potential secure document transmission and file security solutions.

An intuitive, secure platform that “ticks all the boxes” for secure data sharing

“We knew with the introduction of the GDPR we needed to have a method of protecting files that we were sending to clients,” explained Chris. “We had to find a way to transfer files securely to avoid the risks of non-compliance that using email can bring. In January 2018 we started looking for a GDPR compliant solution.”

After evaluating the market for potential solutions to meet GDPR compliance requirements, Carey selected SmartVault. The reasons? Chris cited that SmartVault, “Is a great solution for us. It ticks all the boxes for GDPR compliance, cost and functionality.”

Specifically, Chris and his team have found the ability to add an unlimited number of guests in SmartVault and the platform’s ease of use to be true advantages for their business . There are currently over 50 of Carey’s clients using the platform and the overall  feedback internally has been very positive.

“Since we first implemented SmartVault, everything has gone very smoothly,” reported Chris. “We held some initial training for our staff and showed them what the platform could do and how easy it was to use. The fact that it takes literally 30 seconds to set up a client on the platform made it a lot easier for everyone to get on board right away.”

A solution that makes secure file transfer easy for everyone…

In addition to SmartVault being easy for Carey’s employees to use, clients have also been keen to adopt the new secure process for the sharing of data.. When a new client is onboarded, the team simply sets them up in SmartVault with their own cloud-based “vault” to allow for the secure sending of client data. An email is automatically sent and the client then registers to access their online vault.

SmartVault’s simple but robust access control functionality makes it easy for Carey to assign appropriate access permissions.

“We can’t control the method clients use when they send us information but having a platform that is as user-friendly as SmartVault makes it easy to recommend the solution.” explained Chris. “We use SmartVault to transmit files to our clients and other parties who we need to securely share sensitive information with.

Final Words

Chris is definitive when asked if he would recommend SmartVault to other financial services companies looking for a comprehensive and intuitive document management platform to help meet the requirements of GDPR.

“I would definitely recommend SmartVault,” said Chris. “It does exactly what we need it to do to share data in a very streamlined, easy way. When you look at the functionality SmartVault offers versus the cost, it really is an excellent solution.”