Aegon UK has acquired Pension Geeks – the business that specialises in connecting people with their finances through innovative engagement techniques, communication and events.
Pension Geeks was founded in 2014 by business partners Jonathan Bland and Rachel Parkinson and has specialised in helping employers and financial services providers build bespoke events and communication programmes to encourage people to engage with their finances.
In recent years, Pension Geeks have worked in partnership with companies like Aegon to deliver onsite employer events and have also devised a pensions and wellbeing digital platform for employers - housing things such as webinars, a one-to-one chat facility and a video library to help employees get on board with their finances.
The firm is also the creator of Pension Awareness Day - a national awareness day to which they have driven teams of ‘pension geeks' in vibrant buses and camper vans to different locations across the UK to help thousands of people with their pensions.
Aegon has been working with Pensions Geeks since 2018 but said the firm will remain "operationally independent" as part of this deal but with access to investment and resource to grow the business.
The provider added Pension Geeks will continue to play an important role with Aegon's workplace clients - helping employers looking to engage their employees with their workplace benefits.
Pension Geek co-founder and ‘head geek' Jonathan Bland said: "Today represents a major milestone for the business and I'm thrilled that our future is with a partner that has been instrumental to our growth in recent years. Aegon's commitment to helping customers achieve financial security is so aligned with our mission, so the cultural fit is absolutely perfect for us.
"Part of our success comes from the bold and creative culture we've established at Pension Geeks and with Aegon, we will continue to break the status quo with fresh and out of the box thinking when communicating financial topics."
He added: "We've been into over 200 workplaces and spoken to thousands of people across the country about their savings and what we've found is that with the right approach and a bit of energy people will open up and ultimately leave conversations empowered about their savings.
"Having the investment, resource and backing from a huge global financial services provider like Aegon just means we can do more of this fantastic work."
Aegon UK chief executive Mike Holliday-Williams added: "We've been massive fans of the Pension Geeks work for a number of years and have seen first-hand how powerful and popular their communications and events are with people. Strategically, customer centricity is a significant focus for us and we've invested heavily in member experience and personalised communications recently, so today's acquisition further strengthens our capability in these areas.
"We're keen they retain the independence that has made the business the success it is today, and it will therefore operate separately to the main business but with the ability to draw on the investment and resource it needs to grow.
"We think there's a lot we can learn from the work the Pension Geeks have done in recent years and ultimately believe our partnership will help improve our customers' financial wellbeing."
