Personal and digital advice
Edwin Pijpers is Manager Financial Planning at SPMS. The mandatory decision guidance from the Future Pensions Act is causing a surge in requests for advice from financial planners. ‘As a relatively small fund, we can only handle these requests if we also offer digital service. That is why we started the Yellowtail Conclusion pension portal about five years ago. With this, we offer our participants integral insight into their pension. This integral aspect is important because our participants often have many different assets for their pension. Think of annuities, capital insurance, real estate and pension entitlements with other funds and insurers. In addition, they are all independent entrepreneurs and there is also a value development in the company that can be used upon retirement. This portal includes the option to make an appointment with a financial planner. We do this because we consider the bond of trust with our participants important and because we want to offer added value. With this in mind, we asked Yellowtail Conclusion to conduct qualitative research into how we can further improve our decision guidance.’
The power of qualitative research
Yellowtail Conclusion investigated the digital customer journey of SPMS participants. This was done by talking to participants and giving them tasks to perform. Erik Maas, Managing Consultant at Yellowtail Conclusion: ‘By observing and asking questions, we discover where there are ambiguities and where there are opportunities for improvement. For example, we learned that SPMS participants first want to know where the insights in the tool come from, before they start “playing” with the variables.’ We have now added this explanation to the portal. Participants also indicated that they find it difficult to give an indication of their income and expenditure. That is why participants are now shown the expenditure of people with a comparable income and a comparable family situation. A third learning point was that participants only realised late in the flow that they could also include their partner’s pension and income when making the calculations. We have now adjusted the design and content so that this is reflected earlier in the customer journey. You can only gain such insights from qualitative research.’
Personas by behavior
The data from the interviews were also used to create two personas: the participant who lives in the here and now and is not very concerned about his or her finances and the participant who wants to know exactly how his or her finances are doing and is also consciously concerned about this. SPMS is now setting up specific processes for both groups. Eli Wijfjes, Consultant at Yellowtail Conclusion and also an applied psychologist: ‘The assumption that higher educated people – such as medical specialists – would do more than average personal financial planning was refuted by this research. This group, which is above average skilled, also needs help and activation. What was also noticeable is that we have classified the personas at SPMS by behavior. That is a difference with other funds, where personas are often linked to age groups.’
Award-winning
Improving decision guidance through qualitative research earned SPMS a nomination for a Pension Pro Award in the Communication category “for talking to participants through in-depth interviews, which brought desires, concerns and (financial) needs to light.” They ultimately did not win that award, but it did result in a new nomination at Investments & Pensions Europe (IPE). There they were successful: IPE elected SPMS the best Dutch pension fund, with the jury praising the fund for its personal approach.
Raising the standard of decision guidance
Edwin Pijpers: ‘Het winnen van de prijs is natuurlijk een mooi compliment. Ik vind het positief dat andere fondsen hierdoor bij ons willen kijken hoe wij omgaan met keuzebegeleiding. Want de standaard van keuzebegeleiding kan echt nog wel omhoog. Ik vind dat je als pensioenfonds je deelnemers op het maximale niveau moet adviseren. Dat is ook: integraal inzicht bieden. Ook de kleinste potjes tellen mee. Goed inzicht is voor iedereen van belang.’ Eli Wijfjes deelt die mening: ‘Als deelnemers zien dat ze bijvoorbeeld geen te verwachten erfenis kunnen toevoegen, krijgen ze al gauw de neiging om het inzicht als onvolledig te zien. Daarmee neemt het vertrouwen in de tool af. Hoe completer het beeld is dat een deelnemer krijgt, hoe beter het is.’
Met en zonder advies
Edwin Pijpers: ‘Winning the award is of course a great compliment. I think it is positive that other funds want to look at how we deal with decision guidance. Because the standard of decision guidance can really be raised. I believe that as a pension fund you should advise your participants at the maximum level. That also means: offering integral insight. Even the smallest pots count. Good insight is important for everyone.’ Eli Wijfjes shares this opinion: ‘If participants see that they cannot add an expected inheritance, for example, they quickly tend to see the insight as incomplete. This reduces their confidence in the tool. The more complete the picture a participant gets, the better.’
Keep encouraging
For SPMS, winning the award is an encouragement to keep looking at how they can activate participants even more. Sitting still is not an option, according to Edwin Pijpers. Erik Maas agrees: ‘Everyone in the sector must continue to consciously work on activation and continue to offer the necessary tools. After all, everything in the pension world is constantly changing.’ Edwin Pijpers concludes: ‘The more often people focus on their pension, the more their confidence will increase. Only then will consciously working on pensions have a snowball effect.’
