Heywood Pension Tech
Last week, James Marshall shared part one of how we are transforming the member experience by putting the end user at the heart of our design and research process. Catch up on that blog, here.
Member research
Our initial research was intentionally more conversational than the sessions that we held with our customers, as we wanted to understand what their hopes and fears were as they approached retirement. We asked them to talk about their experiences and how confident or worried they felt about different aspects of retiring, and the prospect of being retired. Understanding this would provide us with a huge amount of insight and allow us to build something for them that they wouldn’t just use but would help provide them with the means to retire with confidence.
The findings
Pain point one: knowledge and understanding of pensions
Members don’t feel sufficiently confident or well-informed about their pensions. Not being able to fully understand the information presented to them, makes them reluctant to engage with pensions meaningfully.
Members found it challenging to make sense of written and verbalised pension information. They don’t understand pension terminology and struggle to make sense of the figures, often struggling to work out the value of their pension. This in turn makes them feel puzzled and embarrassed when they can’t understand their pension information, resulting in an even greater disconnect.
Opportunity: talking to members about their pensions in real terms and in a language they understand, would help make them feel more comfortable and help them better interpret their pension and retirement options.
Pain point two: motivations for and concerns regarding retirement
There are several different triggers and considerations for retirement. The decision to retire raises questions and anxieties about one’s identity, future lifestyle and even their purpose.
The prospect of retirement is often liberating and exciting but also rather daunting. It raises questions about what their purpose and identity will be once they retire. A lot of participants referred to concerns about adjusting to a life without work and being labelled an "Old Age Pensioner" or "OAP".
Opportunity: the retirement process and the decisions related to it are very emotional and members need to feel that they are being understood and listened to. If we can acknowledge the challenges and communicate with empathy it could greatly improve the experience for the user.
Pain point three: will the member be able to afford to retire?
Members collate income and expenditure information from various places to help them plan for retirement; however, the process of finding and capturing all the information that affects the decision to retire is time-consuming and arduous. Worse still, after all that effort, it's not easy for them to work out what their financial situation will look like in retirement.
Paying off debts and mortgages is often a high priority but many members are unsure if they will need to supplement their pensions with part-time work or change their lifestyle in order to cover basic costs.
Opportunity: if we can provide members with a holistic overview of their financial situation, it could help them better plan for their retirement.
Pain point four: trust and uncertainty
The complexity of guidance and the uncertainty surrounding retirement means that members feel compelled to accept things at face value.
Members don’t know where to look for independent and trusted advice. They don’t know where to turn to in order to find information themselves and are often sceptical about getting help from the fund because they aren't clear on what the fund's motivations are. As a result, members regularly turn to friends and family for often empirical advice.
Opportunities: we could help people feel informed, confident and reassured about the pension information they are getting. Could we facilitate knowledge sharing between trusted sources or people in similar situations as they are?
With our pain points and opportunities identified, the next step was to apply them to design elements, which we will discuss in more detail in the next blog of this series.
Improve communication, reduce costs and enhance member engagement with our transformative member engagement platform. Learn more, here.
James Marshall is Heywood’s Lead Product Designer and part of the UX team responsible for designing meaningful product solutions. They also support our agile teams by providing research insights, user testing sessions and conducting interviews with key stakeholder groups.
