By Martin Palmer, Head of Proposition, Corporate Benefits – Friends Life
What started off as an unofficial student directory for a university has revolutionised the way we interact. So there is a lot we can learn from Facebook as we try to break down the barriers that stop people engaging with their pensions. As many more employees get auto-enrolled this year we have a massive opportunity to take the pension message to the people.
Segmentation is one of these opportunities. Online communications have given us unprecedented possibilities to gather data and segment pension scheme members into user groups and communicate with them accordingly. Employees who have just joined the workforce will be interested in very different messages than an employee who is five years from retirement. We can target not only our scheme communications but also webinars and modelling tools. Peer groups can form their own online communities and share information that they have found particularly helpful. When a colleague posts his latest results from a stochastic modeller, it can inspire others to do the same calculation and look at their outcomes more closely.
Seeing how your colleagues make small changes to the amounts they save, or their investment selection, and how that affects what they can afford to do in retirement really helps to make the pensions message more relevant. It can also show that whatever stage of life you are at, you can really influence your retirement income for the better.
Research is showing that the younger age group is now more interested in saving for retirement. In a recent Friends Life study we found that the 28 per cent of 18-24 year olds say they are already saving regularly for their retirement, and using online tools to illustrate how much retirement income is affected by how long your money is invested can really help to turn this resolution into a reality for an even higher percentage of that age group.
There are many online ways of trying to break down the knowledge barriers and engage members with their pension savings. And we need to use them, as the challenge of retirement provision is not going to be solved by auto-enrolment alone - contributions at current rates are just not enough to provide a comfortable retirement for the majority.
So communicating with employees through the channels they use recreationally, may just help us to apply a little social media ‘magic’ to ensure more of us will actually be able to make a comfortable retirement a reality.
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