Super industry lagging on member personalisation

The superannuation industry could move faster on personalisation, according to MLC, and the fund has identified three core areas where it will be focusing its personalisation efforts over the next 12 months.

Speaking at a breakfast roundtable in Sydney, Renee Howie, chief customer officer at MLC, said the fund is looking to other brands and consumer offerings rather than its superannuation peers for examples of where personalisation can deliver benefits.

“Let’s not look at our industry because we know that our industry are laggards, let’s look at where consumers are getting great experiences.

“My health insurance app tells me when my dentist appointment is scheduled, my banking app will tell me when I have upcoming bills and to put more money aside, these are all communications which are helping my life and making my life better.

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“And the superannuation industry has been very slow to get to that point so that is something MLC is very focused on getting to very fast.”

Research by Vanguard earlier this year found Australian retirees could increase their projected annual incomes between 3 and 51 per cent by incorporating personal and household data into their retirement income strategies.

As the complexity in financial situations increased, Vanguard’s best efforts strategy which included this additional information increased projected annual retirement incomes by 3 to 34 per cent, compared to the minimum withdrawal strategy.

Howie said there are three areas that MLC is focusing on in its goal to achieve greater personalisation in the year ahead; data, content and experience.

“The first is data, understanding our members and our future members and we have more data on individuals than ever before, in the superannuation space that has focused on things like their age and where they are in the journey of transition to retirement which are very baseline facts. 

"We want to understand who our members are, what do their attributes look like, how they are interacting with their super fund today and what is the right next step for them in their journey to retirement?

“Second, is content, it’s about ‘how do individuals consume data, where do they get their information from and how do I put content where they are?’ As a super industry, we have a way to go to get there, we are still delivering long-form content and think people are going to want to wade through 40 pages.

“Finally, it’s experience and that feeds hand-in-hand with content. Providing the right content at the right time in the right channel. We also need to remember that the way experiences are being delivered has evolved.

“As an industry, we need to lean in to be able to deliver that and that is something we are very focused on over the next 12 months.”