'There's an aging cohort of administrators and that knowledge base is leaving or needs to be transitioned,' warns Penad's CEO Matthew Price
Running a pension plan is no longer just about ensuring that funds are there when members retire. It’s also about delivering an efficient, secure, and responsive experience to members throughout their entire lifecycle from onboarding to payout. That’s where the technology component comes in.
But Matthew Price, CEO and president of Penad, doesn’t see his firm as just another software provider.
“We are a true third-party administrative platform to administer pension and benefits plans with all the things that you would expect,” he said. That includes online portals, calculations, tax forms, retirement packages and more, all delivered through a platform that’s purpose-built for this space.
The core of Penad’s offering is what Price calls “end-to-end administration,” meaning the system covers every step in a plan member’s journey: onboarding, active service, retirement, and post-retirement payments.
Penad has been in the pension administration business for over four decades. Starting in the early 1980s as a defined benefit administrator, the company quickly evolved to license its own platform.
He believes discussions around tech stacks for pension plans often gets muddled by jargon like CRM, case management, workflow, data integrations. While he acknowledged the importance of those concepts, he emphasized that Penad isn’t trying to be everything to everyone.
“I wouldn't classify us as a CRM,” he said. “Although there are components of that within our software, we are an administrative platform with elements of workflow and CRM so that people can do their job day-to-day.”
However, Price underscored the frequent challenges Penad’s diverse client base often face, which includes banks, insurance companies, unions, governments, and mining firms. Despite the variety, most of the issues can be distilled into two core themes: digital transformation and system integration.
The most pressing problem is clients grappling with outdated systems as many are still relying on platforms that are no longer supported or haven’t kept pace with regulatory or technological changes.
Even more concerning is the human capital drain as he noted there’s “an aging cohort of administrators and that knowledge base is leaving or needs to be transitioned,” he said, adding that when a legacy system and a legacy workforce leave together, plan sponsors are left with very real operational risk.
As a result, employers and plan sponsors are being forced to rethink how they administer plans as a result.
“We’re now finding that this is a great opportunity to rethink how we administer plans in a more modern way,” he said.
Clients often approach Penad seeking solutions that can be layered onto or integrated with their existing systems, particularly around document management and case tracking. While these modules work best inside Penad’s ecosystem, Price said they’re available as add-ons for outside systems as well.
Equally critical is integration. Employers are increasingly asking how to connect pension and benefits systems to HR platforms, accounting software, trading tools, and more.
“How can we integrate systems and allow them to talk to one another?” he said.
Because without the right tech partner, he warned, organizations are exposed.
“You run the risk of your software not really being supported, certainly from a security perspective,” he added, noting that also includes losing the ability to stay current with legislative or tax-related updates.
“I think the biggest thing is clients don't really have an active partner to bounce ideas off of or to gain insight into what's happening from a technological perspective, but also from an industry perspective, noted Price. “How do they stay up at the forefront?”
On the development side, Penad is investing heavily in AI but Price cautioned against overhyping it. After all, he’s skeptical of firms that claim to have AI just to sound relevant.
This is why Penad’s focus is on building AI capabilities that address real problems, particularly around automation and efficiency in pension and benefits operations.
“We're less concerned about being the first to market and delivering something that meets nobody's needs or at least is so superficial that it doesn't meet anybody's needs. We want to develop something,” emphasized Price. “We want to really develop engines and AI models that serve a purpose and help people at the end of the day, beyond just the chatbot or a research tool. We want to be able to develop things that are really going to help automation and drive a lot more efficiency into the marketplace.”
This transformation can also be seen in digital health records, where integrating systems made it easier for doctors and pharmacists to deliver better care. That same philosophy underpins Penad’s goal of linking payroll, banking, accounting, and document systems in one platform to improve both back-end operations and the member experience.
But successful engagement also means reaching users across generations, from teenagers entering the workforce to retirees in their 90s.
“You’ve got this long runway of individuals of different age groups and gap and you’re still interacting with them,” Price said, emphasizing the generational spread as both a challenge and an opportunity, one that few industries outside of healthcare truly understand.
“Pensions are very much the same way. Even benefits. It’s an exciting thing to deal with and work with those communication strategies,” said Price.
