CONTENTS
About the company
Operating at the intersection of finance, technology and insurance, this customer provides specialised services and tools for property lenders. Their dual business model offers direct services while equipping lenders with technology to implement similar solutions independently. Accuracy in valuation and risk assessment is mission-critical in the property lending sector - making data-driven decision-making essential across the whole business, including how they pay their people.
It’s a very niche kind of market where it’s kind of a balance between we offer this service, but we also offer all the tools for you to be able to also have this service.
Because the business spans three distinct industries, their People team faces a benchmarking challenge most HR functions never encounter: the same workforce needs to be assessed against finance norms, technology norms, and insurance norms - depending on which team you are looking at. Generic benchmarking tools, built for single-sector businesses, were not up to the job.
The challenges: four problems, one broken process
Before Compensation IQ, the company's compensation review process suffered from four compounding problems.
Limited data coverage for specialist roles
Their previous compensation platform lacked comprehensive industry-wide data, particularly for specialised positions. Generic salary benchmarking tools focus on broader job categories, leaving significant gaps in highly specialised roles.
"There’d be certain job roles where they didn’t really have hardly any companies for comparison. So, it might be good for more generic roles like HR and payroll, but for underwriters, we probably won’t find as much information." - HR, Payroll and Benefits Manager
Complex cross-sector positioning
As a hybrid finance-tech-insurance company, they needed tailored benchmarking: tech roles assessed against tech companies, finance roles against finance companies. No single-source platform could offer that range.
"We might be benchmarking one department on a technical or IT side, but then another might be purely finance-focused. It depends on the business area and what they primarily do." - HR Director
Extensive manual processing
Their previous system required significant manual effort to compile and analyse data - collating information into spreadsheets, then checking each role separately to see if figures had updated. "The most tedious part was collating information into spreadsheets." - HR, Payroll and Benefits Manager
Outdated data at the point of decision
Their benchmarking update schedule meant compensation decisions were often based on stale information. In a market where salary trends shift quarterly, that risk was real. "We had to leave it quite late because of renewal timing, and we weren’t sure if updates would be available in time. It wasn’t updated monthly." - HR Director
The solution: Compensation IQ
The People team discovered Compensation IQ through an email from their HR system provider, highlighting its seamless integration. That timing and that integration proved to be the deciding factors.
Working in partnership with existing software was definitely a plus. The email came at the right time because we were not quite happy with what we had.
Plug-and-play integration
Compensation IQ connected directly to their HR platform, automatically updating as employees join or leave. This removed the entire manual data-entry and cross-checking burden that had previously consumed their team's time.
Because it is linked to the HR system, any new starters and leavers are updated straight away. No need to manually add or remove people.
The integration also means the entire organisation can be viewed at once - department by department, team by team, role by role - all benchmarked directly within the platform. No more building benchmarks one role at a time and stitching results together in a spreadsheet.
Three data sources, one platform
The core shift was moving from a single data source to Compensation IQ’s multi-source approach. The platform draws from salary records across self-reported data and real-time job postings data powered by Lightcast - giving a complete compensation market view rather than a single, potentially skewed, data point.
The main thing we got from it was more reliable data we trusted. You can see how many companies are being referenced and cross-check with job postings.
Flexible filtering by industry, company size and role
For a business operating across three sectors, the ability to filter benchmarks by industry was transformative. Tech roles could now be assessed against tech peers; finance roles against finance peers. The guesswork of applying generic data to specialist roles was replaced by genuinely relevant comparisons.
We played around with company size and industries. Most roles didn’t need heavy filtering, but for a few, we refined the data to get the right level.
Frequently updated data
With Compensation IQ’s regular data update schedule, they now have access to fresh benchmarks when they need them - removing the timing risk that had previously forced them to make decisions on outdated information.
The fact that it’s updated frequently is very beneficial. If you need a quick answer, you can find it instantly rather than searching Google or calling a recruiter.
The results: a streamlined, more confident process
The overall impact was a compensation review workflow that felt manageable rather than burdensome. Everything in one place. The ability to tweak filters, test different role matches, and find close comparisons - all without leaving the platform or rebuilding a spreadsheet.
It worked well because everything is in one place. You can tweak, test different roles, and find close matches. It was just more fluid.
When asked to describe Compensation IQ in three words, the team had rather more than that to say: "Reliable source, easy-to-use software, clear insights, good support. It’s fast and integrates well with different systems." - HR Director and HR, Payroll and Benefits Manager
So what’s the NPS?
When asked how likely they were to recommend Compensation IQ to other HR teams on a scale of 0 to 10, both the HR Director and the HR, Payroll and Benefits Manager gave it a perfect score.
A perfect score from both the HR Director and the HR, Payroll and Benefits Manager - independently. In an industry where only a minority of HR professionals report being fully satisfied with their compensation management tools, this is a meaningful result.
For a business operating at the complex intersection of three regulated industries, having access to accurate, real-time compensation data that can be filtered to match the specific context of each business area is not a convenience - it is a necessity. Compensation IQ delivered the comprehensive, flexible and reliable solution they needed to make confident pay decisions across every corner of their workforce.