Festina Finance, the Danish fintech known for its pension administration software, has expanded into the UK market with the launch of its cloud-native Festina Life and Pension Platform to serve defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC), collective DC (CDC) and life insurance schemes.
The company is now fully operational and targeting UK pension administrators looking to modernise operations amid mounting regulatory pressure and rising member expectations.
With a presence in Denmark and the Netherlands, Festina Finance supports over £700 billion in assets and over 8 million members across Europe, including European pension providers PensionDanmark and APG.
“From day one, the architecture of the platform has been intentionally designed to be configured for new markets,” said Dan McLaughlin, UK country head at Festina Finance. “Therefore, entering the UK market was a natural and important step in our evolution as a company, and we do so with partners including Netcompany, an investor in Festina Finance.”
McLaughlin added: “Over the past few months, we’ve quietly been laying the groundwork — listening, collaborating, and adapting to local needs. Today, we’re proud to pick up the pace of our UK roll and bring our proven, transformative and trusted administration technology to help build a more agile and responsive pension ecosystem in the UK.”
The platform is designed to address technology issues in the pension sector, offering three key features: a modular, pace-layered architecture based on Gartner’s methodology; no-code configuration for rules, fees, and scheme structures; and strategic freedom from legacy constraints.
“Financial technology systems should empower rather than restrict,” McLaughlin said. “For UK schemes, dealing with legacy systems under increasing regulatory pressure, our platform will enable real agility, simplification, megafund scale and future proofing. Our clients can adapt products, processes and policies quickly and cost-effectively — whether that’s designing a new CDC scheme or tweaking existing DC or DB scheme rules — without long delays or costly change requests.”
He added: “The UK pension landscape is at an inflection point, with increasing complexity and member expectations colliding with legacy tech constraints. We want to break that cycle with a new era of pension innovation — where providers have the tools to deliver efficiently and members get the experience they deserve. Ultimately, our goal is to give pension funds and administrators the freedom to focus on what matters most: strategy, value creation, and member experience — not workarounds, delays, or system limitations.”
