Dunstan Thomas and Digital Keystone join to
support providers and platforms moving to a digital world
5 January 2016
Retirement solutions provider Dunstan Thomas has acquired a
leading provider of technology and services to the wealth
management and investment platform markets Digital Keystone,
effective immediately.
The merged entity will offer a
wider and more functionally-rich set of solutions to address the
unprecedented opportunities and challenges faced by providers
and platforms following the largest shake-up of the retirement
and advice market in a generation.
Digital Keystone will
become part of the Dunstan Thomas Group of companies and
continue to be called Digital Keystone. Together with Digital
Keystone, Dunstan Thomas will be able to provide more
functionality to its front and back office capabilities to their
combined customer-base. This development also means that the
enlarged solutions provider will be able to offer tools, to
address fresh market challenges and opportunities much more
quickly than was possible before.
In the platform market
margin pressure, combined with continued swelling of assets
under management, is demanding increased automation to deliver
much-needed efficiencies to protect profitability. Dunstan
Thomas will now be able to partner more deeply with platforms to
help address these challenges.
Increasing regulation also
continues to demand new layers of transparency and more
comprehensive disclosure to consumers. Dunstan Thomas will
continue working closely with providers to ensure their
regulatory reporting duties are discharged, while informing
policy holders about asset performance and stimulating customer
engagement, much of this through highly responsive online-ready
apps which will be designed for interaction via mobile devices
as well as desktops.
Chris Read, chief executive of
Dunstan Thomas, commented: “By merging with Digital Keystone we
put ourselves in a much stronger position financially and in
terms of our technical know-how and sheer scale – giving
providers greater reassurance. This means we can together
address the many challenges which providers are facing since
Pensions Freedom; while continuing to enable providers to meet
new regulatory disclosure demands; and engaging policy-holders
to a level where they are contributing adequately and making
other sound financial choices – all paving the way to a
comfortable retirement.”
Graeme Gets, founder of Digital
Keystone, said: “By combining our businesses, we will be able to
accelerate development plans for Digital Keystone’s Adaptive
Portal, expanding the functionality and capability of this
highly-regarded financial portal and workflow solution. In
addition, the two businesses together offer a technology
solutions power house for retirement market providers and
platforms alike.”
Graeme Gets becomes the new chief
technology officer of Dunstan Thomas following the merger.
Dunstan Thomas and Digital Keystone confirm that there will
be no redundancies following the merger and both companies’
recruitment plans remain unchanged. Neither company will be
relocating their offices. Financial aspects of the merger were
not publicly disclosed. There are no plans to phase out the
Digital Keystone brand at this stage.