Why data is key to better retirement outcomes

Technology and data were themes in January’s employer event – with insights into member engagement and boosting financial wellbeing high on the agenda.  

We were thrilled to welcome so many to January’s Scottish Widows employer event in London, with people travelling from all over the UK despite the challenges of Storms Isha and Jocelyn. Perhaps the weather reflected how quickly the winds of change are sweeping through pensions. 

We kicked off the day with two interactive panels – one featuring some of Lloyds data experts sharing their view of the potential benefits and risks of the current data revolution. The second had some of our biggest employers alongside our comms and policy expert Pete Glancy, and questions came flying as to how these employers had managed to move the dial so much on pension savings.

With thought-provoking discussions and breakout sessions on everything from improving pension adequacy, open finance, cybersecurity and policy developments, there was much to cover. Everyone got involved and the audience came up with some brilliant suggestions – 20 in all – for the nudges they’d like to see in the Scottish Widows app. 

We shared how we’ve spent much of last year investing in our business, migrating 1.3m customers onto our new platform, and investing heavily in our app which is now used by more than 100,000 people a week. Using the Cloud keeps data safer than ever and makes it easier to manage. 
 

Better pension outcomes

Data is an important topic discussed in-depth at this year’s Davos World Economic Forum summit, along with AI. From our perspective, it’s about how we use those to improve member outcomes.

This February, members will see all their finances in our Scottish Widows app, thanks to Moneyhub’s Open Finance APIs technology. It’s a simple but effective way to use data to help them look after their money today and save for tomorrow and our partnership with Moneyhub will deliver much more over the coming year. 

In the next few months, we’ll start rolling out our Navigate insight tool for employers to see how their members are saving into their scheme pension – and whether there’s a need to get some demographics to save more. It could really make a difference to people’s retirement outcomes ahead of the wide-ranging AE 2.0 consultation expected this year. Employers got the chance to try out Navigate for themselves at the event to see what it can do – and they’re excited.

Moneyhub and Navigate rely on having robust technology and data and that’s where we’re able to make the most of the resources of Lloyds Banking Group with its experience of working with a data pool of 26 million banking customers. Only the NHS has a bigger data set in the UK, explained one of our keynote speakers, Dr Paul Dongha, Lloyds Group Head of Data and AI Ethics.

“We’ve got so much data and AI, and we need to be mindful of keeping everyone’s data safe, with ethics and strong guardrails in place,” he explained, so that it's secure and customers trust us with it, and their pension savings are safe.
 

Data needs humans

But we never forget what we’re here to do and it’s a very human thing – and that’s to support employers and their members. Data is our co-pilot, helping people know what they’ve got now, what they need and when they may need to save more. 

Engagement is something we can’t let up on, with even more support, webinars, podcasts, and this year’s Pension Engagement Season (PES), building on the data of what we know works – as our PES film shows Pension Engagement Season - Showcase Film 2023

Our Scottish Widows pension specialist Robert Cochran has big plans for 2024, hot on the heels of last year’s test-and-learn on Tik Tok and the incredibly successful Pension Mirror tool. 

Blending AI and ONS data in a simple to use ‘selfie’ tool to guess your age and show how much peers have in their pension; the Pension Mirror became a social media phenomenon and was used by more than 70,000 people an average of almost 4 times. It was brilliant to see how it got all sorts of people thinking about their pensions.

Is gamification the future?

Our CEO Chira Barua shared his thoughts and highlighted how much he wants Scottish Widows to use Lloyds Banking Group’s data expertise to benefit employers and members. A tech disruptor at heart, he sees gamification as the way to motivate and encourage people to engage with their pensions. We can learn so much from how people use video games, he explained.

As Scottish Widows’ Workplace Pensions Director Graeme Bold said as he wrapped up the event, we’re not going to stand still. There’s a lot going on in 2024. Watch this space!
 

Highlights of the January 2024 Employer Event at London’s Royal Surgeon’s Hall will be available on YouTube soon.

Thank you to the employers who supported with their insight and practical tips. Our panel sessions were recorded as podcasts, so if you were unable to make the day and would like to hear the detail of these sessions then sign up to our podcast channel. These two new episodes will be dropping soon, and there's already great workplace savings content there.