Retirement and pensions enterprises are modernizing their technology stacks to improve administration accuracy, member and sponsor experiences, and operational resilience across recordkeeping, contributions, pension payroll, withdrawals, investment servicing, and advice-led engagement. Legacy administration platforms, fragmented payroll and member data, and complex scheme or plan rules remain major constraints that increase reconciliation effort, slow change, and limit retirement income innovation.
This shift is accelerating the adoption of a multi-platform ecosystem spanning Plan Administration and Recordkeeping Systems (PARS); Contribution, Payroll, Reconciliation, Withdrawals and Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) platforms; Investment, Portfolio Management, and Decumulation (IPMD) systems; Participant Engagement and Advice (PEA) platforms; and Workflow, Automation, and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) capabilities. API-led integration, cloud modernization, automation, and data-quality controls increasingly connect these platforms.
As modernization progresses, retirement providers, pension funds, recordkeepers, and administrators are raising expectations around lifecycle coverage, regulatory-change readiness, integration depth, processing accuracy, participant experience, and measurable value from technology partners. These expectations are increasing the need to benchmark providers’ capabilities and performance. Everest Group conducted a structured Voice of the Customer (VoC) survey of senior decision-makers across retirement and pensions enterprises globally, covering 47 unique technology providers across five categories. This report synthesizes enterprise priorities, buying drivers, engagement and commercial preferences, and satisfaction levels across key retirement and pensions technology categories to inform platform strategy and provider roadmap priorities.
