Customer, Industry, Product, Use Case

Customer: PensionBox
Industry: Pension & Retirement Services
Product: Tartan Verification API Suite
Primary Use Case: Identity & employment verification during participant onboarding

Executive Summary

PensionBox’s growth strategy depended on delivering a fast, secure, and reliable onboarding experience for new pension participants. However, multiple verification steps - identity checks, employment validation, and compliance records - were creating friction that delayed onboarding and eroded participant confidence.

By integrating Tartan’s real-time verification APIs into its onboarding pipeline, PensionBox dramatically reduced verification cycle times, improved data accuracy, and strengthened compliance integrity. The result was an approximate 50% reduction in onboarding time, a meaningful improvement in participant satisfaction, and a platform infrastructure more capable of supporting future product expansion.

This transformation signifies more than a technical upgrade - it marks a shift from verification as a cost center to verification as a strategic enabler of growth and trust.

The Strategic Challenge: Verification Friction Undermining Experience

PensionBox’s core value proposition is built on reliability. Retirement planning is a long-term commitment, and for both employers and participants, confidence in the accuracy and consistency of administration is a prerequisite for adoption and sustained engagement. 

Early experiences set the tone for trust that must hold over decades, not just the point of signup.

However, prior to implementing Tartan, several structural constraints weakened this promise. Identity confirmation depended on slow, externally managed processes that introduced delays outside PensionBox’s direct control. 

Employment verification was fragmented across systems and required manual reconciliation, increasing the likelihood of inconsistencies and rework. Compliance teams, in turn, spent disproportionate effort stitching together verification outputs from multiple sources rather than operating from a single, defensible view of participant data.

Collectively, these verification bottlenecks extended onboarding timelines and made outcomes difficult to predict. For a pension platform, this lack of operational certainty is more than an efficiency issue - it directly impacts trust, slows adoption, and weakens differentiation in a market where experience, reliability, and regulatory confidence are decisive factors.

A TLDR take from a perspective of a CXO here is:

• Identity confirmation relied on slow, externally managed processes

• Employment verification was fragmented and manually reconciled

• Compliance teams spent effort stitching results from multiple sources

• All these aspects impact CX and trust in the platform

Insight: In regulated financial contexts like pensions, verification delays translate directly into trust erosion. Participants equate slow onboarding with risk, and inconsistent data increases compliance exposure.

The Solution: Real-Time Verification Embedded in Workflow

Tartan’s suite of verification APIs was implemented directly into PensionBox’s onboarding stack, enabling:

• Identity verification with immediate feedback

• Employment status confirmation tied to accurate, current records

• Unified verification results that require no manual reconciliatio

By embedding verification at the point of participant action, PensionBox was able to eliminate handoffs, reduce rework, and deliver a verification experience that is both fast and defensible from a regulatory perspective.

Insight: True verification automation isn’t about speed alone - it’s about timeliness with integrity. For PensionBox, the ability to verify in real time elevated both operational efficiency and brand trust.

Operational Impact: Shrinking Time, Increasing Confidence

With Tartan in place:

• Onboarding time for new participants was reduced by ~50%

• Verification errors and exceptions dropped significantly

• Compliance teams gained structured, consistent verification outputs

• Manual reconciliation work was virtually eliminated

Operational teams reported that the onboarding workflow - previously punctuated by waits and retries - became smooth and predictable. This predictability is not only operationally efficient but also improves forecasting and SLA management.

Insight: When the variability of verification outcomes is reduced, organizations can manage expectations with precision. PensionBox could now promise - and deliver - onboarding timelines with confidence that was previously unavailable.

Business Impact: Faster Adoption, Higher Trust

The operational efficiencies translated into tangible business outcomes:

• Improved participant satisfaction, particularly as onboarding became faster and more transparent

• Reduced support tickets related to verification issues - freeing staff for higher-value work

• Stronger compliance posture, as consistent verification outputs aligned with regulatory expectations

• Greater ability to scale, because manual tasks no longer rose with volume

This shift matters fundamentally: for a pension provider, trust is currency, and every increase in speed and accuracy reinforces that trust.

Insight: In customer lifetime-value businesses like pensions, early experience influences long-term commitment. A slow or error-prone onboarding process doesn’t just delay activation - it undermines confidence that matters over decades.

Customer Perspective

“Tartan enabled us to deliver an onboarding experience that matches the reliability we promise in pension outcomes. Participants now get verified faster and with fewer touchpoints - that builds trust from day one.”
- Head of Operations, PensionBox

This feedback is not just technical praise - it underscores brand credibility and customer trust, the very foundations of a pension platform.

What This Enables Going Forward

With real-time verification integrated into its core systems, PensionBox now has:

• A scalable onboarding foundation that supports rapid participant growth without requiring proportional increases in operations, enabling PensionBox to expand coverage while maintaining consistent onboarding timelines and service quality.

• The ability to launch adjacent product offerings without being constrained by verification latency, allowing new plans and features to reach market faster without introducing incremental compliance or operational risk.

• A trust-enhancing first experience for every participant, where fast, transparent verification reinforces confidence in PensionBox’s ability to manage long-term retirement outcomes from day one.

• Reduced operational risk and more predictable compliance outcomes, as verification is enforced systematically within workflows rather than relying on manual checks and post-hoc controls.

Moving verification into the core of the workflow means that PensionBox supports not just more participants - it supports them with confidence, speed, and integrity.

Insight: Organizations that improve onboarding velocity with integrity are better positioned to increase lifetime engagement and reduce churn. For PensionBox, verification is now not a hurdle to clear, but a differentiator in a competitive pension landscape.