Making savings and engaging with forgotten demographics
Engagement,
reimagined
reimagined
Engaging with pension plan members has historically been a difficult task. The often one-way process has been dominated by costly mail communications, with limited evidence of impacts on member decision-making.
Things are changing and it just got personal.
Heywood Video Engage is an interactive and personalised tool that simplifies complex financial information to engage members like never before.
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is part of the National Local Government Pension Scheme.
Barking and Dagenham administers the Fund for its own employees, as well as for other employees admitted to the Fund under an admission agreement. The Fund is administered by an in-house team of six and serves over 20,000 members.
Digestible information
“We were very impressed with Video Engage – especially with how the person was able to explain the most important parts of the annual benefit statements that people need to know, without going into the full details.
Statements usually have a lot of detail but the video explains in simple terms the most important parts that members need to know.
Prior to using Video Engage, we posted statements and were aware that people were not taking the time to read them.
From the members calling us, they would say there was too much information and it wasn’t clear that they knew what they were looking at from the figures provided – they found it muddled.
We wanted to offer an alternative for people that struggle to digest written information – this has helped cover a wider audience base.”
Increased understanding
“We have shared active and deferred benefit statements via Video Engage and all of the feedback has been positive.
People are very pleased that their essential data is in one place, in plain English and they can access it any time. Even if they’re not ready to view the video when it becomes available, they know they can dip in and out of it without losing any information.
We have definitely noticed a change in member behaviour, with a remarkable and significant observation made that we have had fewer members requesting repeat copies of statements and more queries about connecting with their pension.
Immediate benefits
“Members are more interested in what they have in their pension and are asking questions about increasing their benefits.
Video Engage has made a lot of members realise that they may not have enough to live on retirement and there has been a rise in asking about additional contributions.
Anything to encourage people to remain in the scheme and pay more into it is a very good thing; we haven’t had any negative feedback at all.”
As a result of Video Engage, the feedback we’re getting makes us feel like we’re providing a better service to our customers.”
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund
Simple and accessible
“We really appreciate Video Engage’s clear and concise use of language. It covers everyone – we have had feedback from senior fund members working alongside the team who have said that it isn’t patronising or too simple or low level. We think it’s short and snappy and it’s the first thing members see in their portal.
We have seen a lot more queries from people and stronger engagement from those on the lower-end of the pay scale, as a lot of our fund members are manual workers. They are taking more interest in their pensions because they’ve said “everything is in plain English”, which helps them understand the information."
Making savings
“We were outsourcing our postal benefit statements, which involved running and loading PDF files to a portal in batches.
This was really slow as we could only do so many in one day - sending all benefit statements this way previously took around three weeks and was really costly and there were risks of the information going to incorrect or outdated addresses.
Thanks to Video Engage, we’ve been able to capture email addresses that we didn’t have before and communicate easily with our members – all we have to do is send our members a bulk email; it’s brilliant!
The multi-factor authentication has been a big peace of mind for us and the whole team has noticeably benefited from it - they team love it. It’s also been a way to encourage members to update their data, which has helped improve our data quality.”
"When asked, only 25 people have expressed a preference for only paper-based benefit statements – that’s just 0.38% of our membership! We’ve saved around £10,000 a year on the costs of producing, printing and posting paper benefit statements.”
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund
How Video Engage will work for you
- Educate
AI 'avatars' present personalised information using plain language. - Provide
Members can view anytime, anywhere, on any device. - Engage
Provide multiple language options and accessibility features.
Ready to simplify pensions and boost member engagement?
- By using Video Engage, 88% of users show a better understanding of their pension.
- Since its launch, Video Engage has been available to over 250,000 pension plan members.
Our innovative tools—like personalised Video Engage—can revolutionise how you communicate with members.
Old problems? We’ve got new solutions. Pensions perfected - that’s
the Heywood way.