Funds not voting with their feet on data sharing

Despite knowing the importance of member experience data in improving superannuation funds’ capabilities across the board, around half of surveyed super professionals are reticent to share that information with each other.

Live polling at the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds on the Gold Coast today revealed that while 52 per cent of responding delegates thought that funds should be sharing their member experience data, only 15 per cent said that they would be willing to do so.

Thirty-six per cent were unsure whether they would, while 49 per cent said a flat-out no. In terms of whether funds should be sharing it, there was an even split of 24 per cent each way for delegates who thought they shouldn’t share it and ones who weren’t sure.

“That comes down to theory over practice,” HESTA’s general manager, campaigns and customer growth, Georgie Obst, said on the result. “In practice, are we going to better off [by sharing]? People will be wondering; do they lose their competitive edge. That’s something that I’d be thinking when it came down to the crunch.”

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Of course, in order to share that data, funds would first need to collect it from members.

To achieve this, First State Super’s head of product, Amanda Ralph, said that funds needed to show members that they’ve got robust systems in place to protect that data and that there was some benefit to them of giving that data.

“I don’t think we can expect members to just give over their data to us without that contract and that understanding that we’re doing it for them,” she said.