APT Workplace Pensions : Digital Client Onboarding
APT Workplace Pensions, a leading pensions management services company, managed over €1 billion in assets across 55,000 members before becoming part of the Irish Life Group.
Plain Concepts has partnered with APT across several strategic initiatives, delivering technology solutions for client onboarding, pension and wealth management portals, and advanced reporting and analytics.
For this engagement, APT sought to digitise their manual client take-on process for Approved Retirement Fund (ARF) and Personal Retirement Bond (PRB) schemes — a highly paper-intensive workflow that impacted both operational efficiency and customer experience.
APT representatives travelled nationwide to meet customers and assist them in completing lengthy paper application forms — more than 50 pages and over 200 questions per application.
This manual process presented multiple challenges:
- Inefficient and time-consuming workflows, requiring significant manual effort for both customers and staff.
- Data quality risks, including potential errors and incomplete information.
- Limited connectivity, as many clients were based in rural areas with poor internet access.
- Cumbersome documentation management, with physical handling of ID verification, signatures, and actuarial SORP calculations.
- Inconsistent customer experience, resulting from variations in manual processes.
- APT needed a modern, mobile-enabled solution that could replicate the full application process digitally while improving accuracy, speed, and user satisfaction.
APT Workplace Pensions’ journey to fully digital client onboarding
Plain Concepts designed and developed a mobile and web application to fully digitise APT’s ARF and PRB client take-on process. The solution modernised data capture, simplified compliance requirements, and provided seamless integration with APT’s back-office system, Profund, ensuring a single source of truth.
The key features included offline functionality that allowed representatives to complete applications even in areas without connectivity, automatically syncing once back online. The solution also incorporated photo capture and upload for ID verification by attaching images of passports or utility bills, as well as digital signatures to collect all required approvals within the application. Users could pause and resume the process at any time, and a PDF export generated a completed application identical to the original 50-page paper form. Additionally, the platform integrated a SORP calculator, embedding an actuarial calculation tool—previously managed through spreadsheets—directly within the application.
Results
- Eliminated manual paperwork, replacing over 50 pages of physical forms with a streamlined digital process.
- Enhanced data quality and accuracy, through real-time validation and direct integration with the Profund back-office system.
- Increased operational efficiency, reducing administrative workload for representatives and back-office teams.
- Improved customer experience, enabling faster, simpler applications with digital signatures and offline access.
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