Today’s the day we pitch to be Britain’s top micro-enployer at the Paintworks in Bristol.

We are one of 30 employers left in the competition, one of 20 actively trading- we have a 5% chance of winning!

But that isn’t the only point, everyone seems to be winning from  the Pitch. We’ve made some great friends, learned a bundle about pitching and marketing and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves through working on our financial projections.

This competition is more than about marketing, it’s about building sustainable businesses that grow to be the employers of tomorrow, so win or lose today, we’re looking forward to a great day. Olly, my son, is with me- I say to learn- he says to stop me embarrassing myself!

So here’s our pitch!

Who are we?

Pension Play Pen is Britain’s first end-to-end pension enrolment service for small employers. We engage employers , we educate them and we empower them to stage auto-enrolment with the pension that suits them best!

What’s our market?

Our opportunity is the 1.2m employers still to stage auto-enrolment , the majority of whom have no suitable pension for their staff, ask a group of 100 such employers how many are ready to enrol and one person might put up their hand. We need 1 person in a hundred to use our service to meet our financial targets.

What’s our solution?

We take data from employers and show them what auto-enrolment will cost, we give them tools to model that data to get the contribution structure right,

We send the data to up to 25 pension providers who we rate (using First Actuarial’s balanced scorecard). The employer pays us £499 (+vat) and sees all the providers who will offer terms and the terms on offer. Each provider is listed in a league table, with a rating beside them- the highest rated is at the top of the list.

The ratings are adjusted by the experience of employers who have already used the system and the experience of payroll suppliers and bureaux.

The employer then takes a decision, the data is then downloaded to the chosen provider who uses it to set up the scheme, meanwhile the employer gets a detailed report on the process and their decision which is their audit trail, they also get a certificate that confirms they have followed a process endorsed by First Actuarial.

What are our threats?

Fear and apathy- fear of pensions and apathy about the pension decision. Many employers , their accountants and even regulated financial advisers do not understand what makes for a good process and are intimidated by auto-enrolment. Many employers are scared by new technology and the novelty of our approach.

Other employers get what they do but think all pensions are the same, they are sceptical that you can choose a good pension and will take the first offer that comes along (usually NEST)

To counter these threats we engage people with our enthusiastic approach ,educate people through blogs, talks and caseless natter on social media and empower people using our system to make a difference

How do we make out money?

So far the bulk of our revenues comes from our brilliant advertisers (thanks guys), but increasingly we are making money from transactions, as we build our big dataset through more and more use, we expect to become the primary source of data for those with a strategic interest in auto-enrolment in the UK.

Why do we want to win the Pitch?

To extend our outreach and get to more of the 1.2m employers, the people who advise them and the people who run their payroll.

Please wish us luck today and if you haven’t already done so, please register at http://www.pensionplaypen.com/register . We need your support!