Short interview with Oliver Bienek, Founder & CEO of Liberty Group
Liberty Pensions is synonymous with excellence in 2nd and 3rd pillar pension services. Apart from its direct services to individual clients, Liberty Pension also supports consultants, banks, asset managers and, more recently, Fintech companies looking to offer their products on the pension market through our newly developed 'SmartGate' platform. The successful Liberty Pension brand stands for innovation, independence and quality.
How has the difficult situation affected your Company?
The stock market plunge dragged our revenues down with it; we basically used the time to push ahead with digitisation, settle pending issues and come to terms with the new world.
What changed in your everyday life?
My focus as an entrepreneur has shifted considerably. Where I usually deal with the strategic direction and development of the brand, and with launching new products and driving growth, I suddenly found myself in emergency mode. Business operations had to be safeguarded and jobs secured.
Our motto is "Digitilisation combined with human power". We seek to implement the latest technologies both in-house and externally, and to ensure our employees greater autonomy and responsibility. As long as our employees are content and satisfied, and are committed to achieving their targets, our clients and partners will feel the same. A virtuous circle!
Do you have a practical vision for your future?
We have meanwhile transitioned to a new reality. Although everyone pretends there will be a return to normalcy, the crisis is far from over. If you look at developments in countries like Sweden, the UK, Russia, Brazil or the USA, we are not out of the woods yet, far from it. Moreover, there are already rumours of a new, even more dangerous virus from China. Only a drug or vaccine will definitively stop the virus.
Therefore, the rushed return to normalcy comes as precipitous and premature. The economy cannot cope with a second lockdown. And if there is a second wave, we shall have to be much better prepared. We in Switzerland are still miles away from that at the moment. At Liberty, caution and restraint prevail.
As a company you have to adopt a long-term perspective and be prepared to constantly reinvent yourself. We aim to become the undisputed leader in the provision of online pension services, and to develop into a modern marketplace with an attractive range of services tailored to our clients and partners. Accordingly, we put our heart and soul into our work every day. We are expanding our new platform 'SmartGate1' to ensure our direct clients and business partners access to an attractive range of online products, now including "OpenPension" (like OpenBanking). We have consistently pursued our platform strategy for 15 years; today, our community strategy is more specifically geared to certain groups with a view to establishing a strong community. To this end, we have founded the Swiss business associations, among others, and are planning further innovative products and services de-signed to foster even stronger client loyalty.
1Vision with SmartGate: the Swiss pensions market is still characterised by manual interventions and far too much paper. Our goal is to establish SmartGate® as an e-platform with modern and attractive functionalities and to expand it into a paperless, cost-effective and scalable "e-platform 4.0" for the Swiss pension market.