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| Congruent's focus on Pension Plan Administration Industry |
Congruent Solutions is a technology and business support services vendor which plans to focus on Retirement / Pension Plans administration. With beginnings in the domestic market, the company launched their offshore business in 2000 along with a US headquarters. The privately-funded company has an office in Singapore, and has recently entered into a JV with a company in Luxembourg.
In an interview by The Hindu, when asked about the key offshored services offered by Congruent, Mr. Bala J. Raman, co-founder and President of Congruent Solutions Pvt Ltd, Chennai said, "we primarily offer technology development and retirement plan administration services. Of the over 200 people we have, about 40 are involved in retirement plan administration and the rest in IT services and outsourced product development".
On being asked about his entry into the Retirement Plan administration, Raman said, "We built a product for a client in the 401K space in the US, and, in the process, acquired very deep domain knowledge in the pension plan administration space. Then, we started preparing ourselves to offer Plan administration as a service. Technology development is a generic 'me too' kind of a service which we do very well through our SEI/CMMi compliant delivery center, but we are planning to build retirement plan administration services as our differentiator. Of the 12 to 14 business processes that typical retirement plan providers in the US have going on in their back-office, we have migrated 10 processes to our offshore center".
Congruent is currently servicing 10 clients in this space and is probably the only company world-wide to have an ISO 9001:2000 certification for their back-office pension administration services. "Moreover, we also have senior members of our team undergoing certification from National Institute of Pension Administration (NIPA), USA, which is another first outside the US. We are uniquely positioned in the place being an early mover and in addition setting the standards in the industry" says Bala.
Some of the challenges that are met at Congruent as told by him "It's a challenge to convert customers for offshoring pension services, since off-shoring in this vertical is still in its nascent stages. So, we have gone through the cycle of converting cynicism, to cautious adoption to embracement with conviction. They are, understandably, wary of offshoring personal data, information etc. However we have been quality-oriented in our approach and have taken the certifications and follow the best practices in the industry. We have set standards and processes which we follow rigorously. We have also put in place high-level of information security practices to provide total comfort to our clients."
According to Raman, on the manpower front, there will be a minimum growth of 100% in the next few years. He also expects the retirement plan administration group to be 150 to 200 or so in the next two years. This definitely would be his key focus area, going forward, as he finds it to be a green-field opportunity with very few players and tremendous opportunity for growth.
Mr. Bala concluded the interview saying, "One is open to opportunities in an evolving business environment. However, I like what I am doing and am happy to run the business for the next ten years also. We are a profitable company and have been in the business for quite some time and have developed specialized processes and domain skills, and believe we have built an organization of value."
Source: Value Notes
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