Foster Denovo
Taking over a critical employee benefits platform and rebuilding it as: Aspire Hub
Key Outcomes
A critical employee benefits platform successfully taken over and rebuilt as Aspire Hub
Rolled out to around 200 of Foster Denovo's 1,000+ employer clients, with further rollout planned
A new mobile app driving a significant rise in employee engagement
Employees able to self-serve benefits information, reducing reliance on HR teams
Positive early feedback from employers and their staff
Business Context
Foster Denovo is a financial services and employee benefits provider. It supports over 1,000 employer clients and their staff.
At the heart of that service is a digital platform. It lets employees check and manage their workplace benefits. The original version of that platform was called My Benefits at Work. It had been built and maintained by a single external developer, and it had been rolled out successfully to a broad customer base. Then that developer gave notice. He was retiring.
Foster Denovo suddenly had a platform that worked, with no one left to support it.
The Problem
A platform is only as resilient as the people who can maintain it.
Across financial services, a lot of critical infrastructure has been built by small teams or sole developers. It works well. Until that person leaves.
When that happens, the knowledge often leaves too. Why decisions were made. How to extend the system safely. None of that is written down anywhere.
Foster Denovo needed a partner who could step into that gap with confidence.
The Challenge
A live system, already working well
My Benefits at Work was not a struggling product. It had already rolled out successfully to a broad customer base.
That made the transition higher stakes, not lower. There was a working platform to protect, not a broken one to fix.
A complex, tightly regulated product
Foster Denovo is FCA regulated. The platform deals with pensions.
Pensions are complicated at the best of times. Add tax rules on top, and the complexity multiplies.
Building this platform meant understanding that complexity properly. Not just the software requirements, but the regulation and the tax detail underneath them.
Needing both web and mobile expertise in one team
Foster Denovo wanted a single team capable of handling both the existing web platform and a new mobile app. Splitting that across two suppliers would have added risk and complexity at exactly the wrong moment.
A pattern of being kept in the dark
Foster Denovo had been burned before by projects they describe internally as rescue projects.
The pattern was familiar. A developer goes away. They build something in isolation. Weeks or months later, they hand it back to a team who never saw it being built and now have to use and support it.
Foster Denovo did not want that to happen again.
The Solution
The Curve took over development of Foster Denovo's employee benefits platform and rebuilt it as Aspire Hub. A new mobile app was added alongside the existing web platform, delivered by a single team covering both.
The team got up to speed quickly with the financial services domain. That included FCA compliance and the specific complexities of pensions and taxation the platform needed to handle correctly. Throughout development, Foster Denovo could see, test and understand the system as it was being built. Not just receive it once it was finished.
Our Approach
Earning trust before earning the work
Foster Denovo found The Curve through a personal connection, at a point where finding the right technology partner felt genuinely difficult. That relationship mattered. But it was The Curve's understanding of what Foster Denovo needed, and the complexity behind it, that turned a connection into a working partnership.
Learning the domain properly
Taking over a platform like this meant understanding Foster Denovo's world. The FCA regulatory environment. The complexity of pensions products. The tax implications that shape how that information needs to be presented. That depth of understanding mattered. It meant the platform could be trusted, not just technically functional.
One team, both platforms
Rather than treating the web platform and the mobile app as separate projects, The Curve delivered both through a single team. That kept the product consistent across web and mobile, and gave Foster Denovo one point of accountability instead of two.
Building in the open
The Curve did not disappear to build the platform and return with a finished product. Foster Denovo could see, test and understand the system throughout development. The team who would use and support Aspire Hub were part of the journey, not handed something unfamiliar at the end.
The Results
A successful takeover, with no disruption: Aspire Hub is now live. It has replaced My Benefits at Work as Foster Denovo's employee benefits platform. The single-developer dependency that had put the business at risk is gone.
Rollout underway across a large client base: Aspire Hub has been rolled out to around 200 of Foster Denovo's 1,000-plus employer clients. The plan is to extend that to the remaining 800 over time.
A meaningful rise in employee engagement: Since launching the mobile app, Foster Denovo has seen far more employees logging on to check their benefits than before. Employees can now self-serve the information they need, without contacting their HR team or hunting for it elsewhere. Early feedback from both employers and their staff has been positive.
Aspire Hub gave Foster Denovo more than continuity. It gave them a platform their team actually understands, built around the real complexity of their world. Foster Denovo is now exploring how Aspire Hub could absorb other services as part of its next phase, as the rollout continues across the remaining employer base.
The Curve seemed to understand what we were looking to develop and understood the complexity of it. They had a team that could handle both the app and the web side that we needed. They've gone the extra mile to really understand our market, including the regulatory side and the tax complexity, in order to help us create the product our clients need. Responsive, understanding. I would recommend The Curve