Super funds need to offer value
Superannuation funds cannot hope to establish trust with their clients simply by communicating with them, according to Metlife head of product, pricing and reinsurance, Richard Anderson.
Speaking at the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees super insurance symposium, Anderson said the only way to establish trust with fund clients was by offering something valuable to them, like free advice.
There was a trend for people to increasingly ignore traditional authority figures, such as bank managers, and trust instead in new models of authority like “money saving experts”, Anderson said.
“The only way to establish trust today is by offering something valuable or credible to your customers, while interaction with them doesn’t offer any value, it actually undermines your authority,” he said.
Anderson also suggested that super funds should engage with the membership by “piggybacking” off their client’s existing routine.
“People tend to find things simple that they do over and over again, so if you can piggyback [off] an already existing routine, the chances are that you’re likely to engage them,” he said.
Customers also tend to “navigate” through confusing or distracting material to find out if something is valuable to them, so super funds should create easy methods or “shortcuts” through distracting information, in order to show the value of their services, Anderson said.
“Highlighting something that helps our clients take these shortcuts means our customers are less likely to pass over us, or our products or services,” he said.
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