Laura Blows talks to ITM executive chairman Duncan Howorth (formerly JLT CEO) about his new role and the evolving nature of ITM

So Duncan, your move to ITM was of great interest, not least because of your own reputation within the industry. As JLT and ITM are very different companies, what made you decide to join ITM?

I love growing businesses and being part of businesses that grow. ITM is a growing business. I’ve known the founders, Guy, Grant and Dan, for many years and watched and respected the business as it built an extraordinary reputation for its data work in the pension scheme market. It’s a firm that’s full of talented people and I think it has enormous potential to grow in the future. So I’m very excited to be part of it.

A key difference between JLT and ITM is that ITM is particularly known for being a data specialist. I believe your role at JLT was enhancing its reputation and educating the industry as to the breadth of offering that JLT provided. Will this be the same with ITM? Is there more than just data to inform clients about with ITM?

Yes, I think part of the role is, and will be about, developing the profile of the business. As you rightly say, if you mention ITM, the first thing on people’s minds is pension scheme data. We actually do an awful lot more than that. I guess part of the challenge is to become better known for those other services. For example, in addition to working with over half of the largest UK pension schemes over the years, we work with most of the UK’s life insurers. We work with most, if not all, of the bulk annuity players. And in the last year alone, we have started to work with more than 20 local government pension schemes. So already we are starting to apply our services and skills to a wider market.

And then there is actually what we do. In addition to pension scheme data audit and cleanse and rectification, we’re increasingly running data migration projects, whether that’s migrating data from one third-party administrator to another, or working around consolidation of insurers’ systems, possibly after mergers and so forth. So there’s a wide range of data and data related work that we do.

Underpinning all the services that ITM provides is technology. Please could you talk me through the different technology services that ITM provides to clients?

Technology has always underpinned everything that we have done at ITM, even our core data assurance work. We’ve got a range of tools to track and map data and to analyse data. But, more recently, we have developed some software which is available for clients to use. We have two main products. The first is PenScope. It’s a pensions administration system, it’s one of the largest systems used in the UK when measured by the number of schemes. When you couple that with our member portal and our archive system and auto-enrolment tool, our aim is to provide our client, whether a pension scheme or a TPA, with a highly efficient administration environment. The auto-enrolment tool itself, which we call eAsE, is available on a standalone basis, to help employers, large or small, to integrate between payroll systems and pension providers to enable that enrolment process to run smoothly. And we have an increasing number of customers for that product as well.

All those technology offerings can be used by different clients for different means. Could you talk me through the different clients that work with ITM and also the different challenges they face?

I think the pensions industry constantly gives us challenges to address. We have to look at our different types of client and see how best we can help them with our technology or services through those challenges.

Our pension scheme clients are currently working their way through the GMP reconciliation process. We have technology to help them take some of the graft out of that and to provide audit trails to show that the rectification process has been done. Schemes are looking at pension freedoms and how they can help their members make informed decisions around the additional options they now have. And I’m sure that something will come out of the Department of Work and Pensions Select Review that will heap some new work and new challenges onto pension schemes.

For insurers, they have got different issues. They are still working their way through Solvency II and we think there is a big opportunity to help them. On the data side, there is the challenge to analyse data and to look to release capital by looking at the liability profile of some of those businesses. And also, to continue to help them with data work and data migration projects. Local authority and local government schemes are probably going through as much change as they have seen for many years. It looks like that sector is moving towards more of a shared service model, so there could be some consolidation of pensions administration, where some of our services might be helpful for that. So I can see us becoming very busy in the coming years.

As you said there are many challenges happening at the moment, but also many more to come. So with that in mind, how do you think ITM will evolve, say over the next few years, to help clients meet these current and upcoming challenges?

As I mentioned, we are ambitious and we hope to grow and we think the way to do that is to firstly stay close to our existing pension scheme clients who have been very loyal to us over the years.

Secondly, to continue to innovate and to challenge the way things are done – both inside the firm but also in the market. And thirdly, to become more active and visible in the financial services industry generally and also in the local government pensions market.

We also want to expand. We would like to think we could do that through partnerships or maybe moving into new areas where we can provide solutions to clients. And finally, to develop the culture of the firm and of us ‘ITMers’ as we refer to ourselves, as at the end of the day, we have got a talented group of people and it is they who make the firm.