Smart Pension: The Story of a Powerful Product and Team Augmentation

How to maintain Formula 1 growth speed without losing product and development quality.
FinTech Development
React.js
Ruby on Rails
TypeScript

Smart Pension is a high-scaling FinTech company that has inspired a new approach to pension systems in the UK and abroad. Once their self-service and automatic enrolment solution proved a huge success, the software team started growing exponentially. The only way to keep up the pace and quality was to hire developers externally and leave further recruitment to an experienced provider. Here’s how Smart Pension ensured quick growth and top software quality by joining forces with Code & Pepper.

About Smart Pension

Smart Pension is a perfect example of FinTech revolution brought to the areas normally operated by state institutions and banks. The platform offers automatic pension schemes based on a defined contribution plan, handling the whole process through a digital platform. 

Challenge

Smart Pension, a UK-based workplace pension platform, started as a product dedicated to their domestic market, but it proved to have the potential to conquer global markets. The new ambitions were followed by an increased demand for new employees – in 2019, the in-house development team growth exceeded 400%. At this pace, the company needed to find new sources of employees with appropriate skills to avoid compromising the product quality. 

Solutions for Smart Pension

“The fast fish eats the slow fish” – agile teams for fast-paced growth

In today’s business, the size doesn’t matter as much as the speed of development – even a small player can win with a big enterprise if it reacts quickly to the changing market. As a consequence, such companies need to find ways to optimise their performance and maintain high standards. One of the ways followed by Code & Pepper and cultivated in Smart Pension was agile team management with such elements as:

  • a dedicated product owner that stays in touch with the client’s team and is available for constant communication;
  • project management based on Kanban, put together by a dedicated Agile lead supporting the teams in all locations;
  • self-organising development teams working independently, but keeping each other up to date with their progress.

Over 40 exceptional engineers from Code & Pepper, based in Warsaw and Kraków, were seamlessly integrated with the London core team, regularly participating in online meetings.

Strict product requirements vs. customisation

As a FinTech product, Smart Pension faces the necessity to comply with strict regulatory requirements. More importantly, the evolution from a UK-based workplace pension to a globally adaptable platform requires constructing features that are highly customisable. To resolve the two matters, teams built by Code & Pepper in Poland work hand in hand with Smart Pension engineers to create an advanced pension forecaster. It is based on complex conditions, which results in just the right level of flexibility to adapt the platform to different regulations.

Continuous Deployment for irresistible code quality

Smart Pension has cultivated a strong developer community with high standards in terms of code quality and development process. There was no other way for Code & Pepper but find skilled developers and quality assurance specialists who would follow the client’s requirements including:

  • Clean code – universally compatible with previously developed branches and easily maintainable;
  • Continuous Deployment – new branches are merged 20+ times a day;
  • Focus on testing – the code features nearly 100% test coverage.

Code & Pepper built two dedicated engineering teams, totaling over 40 outstanding specialists, located in dedicated offices in Warsaw and Krakow that meet the highest standards of security and infrastructure. Dedicated project and office managers ensured comfortable working conditions, and professional development, and maintained interpersonal relationships.

Code & Pepper have been instrumental in scaling our Engineering Team. By building dedicated teams of Ruby Engineers, they have helped us hire highly skilled developers into our business.

Martin Warner Head of Talent
at Smart Pension

True Engineering Talents
Behind Smart’s Success

Our selection process goes beyond mere academic qualifications, scrutinizing over 70 distinct technical abilities to identify the elite 1.6% of tech geniuses. This rigorous approach ensures our development services are of unparalleled excellence.

Extend Your Team with True Talents

Claiming talent is commonplace. We have a unique recipe
for identifying the finest 1.6%. Try it!

Olga Pogorzelska
New Business

See Next Case Study

Flex Funding

Copenhagen, Denmark

Smart UX and UI design brought to life with Angular for profitable investing and lending

Industry: FinTech Development
Technology: Angular, TypeScript
Read More