Leading the way in transforming member experiences
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (the Fund) is part of the National Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).
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 five and serves over 20,000 members.
Overview
The use of online portals makes it easier for members to access information about their pension, understand their benefits, and gain a clear picture of their financial situation. This in turn helps members plan better and use the information to make informed decisions.
Barking and Dagenham pension fund were keen to stay aligned with other pension schemes by offering an online member portal and meeting the expectations of members in the digital era.
Each year, the Fund had been printing and posting over 6,000 annual benefit statements (ABS) at a significant cost, which had been increasing over time. Combined with increased scrutiny on data protection and issuing sensitive and confidential information by post, there was a strong appetite to develop an online member portal. Once funding had been agreed, this became a reality.
Driving innovative member enagement
Heywood’s groundbreaking new member engagement platform revolutionises how pension schemes connect with members and empowers them to confidently and securely oversee their pension information.
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund were one of the first to take advantage of this innovative new platform.
Solution overview:
- Tested on real user behaviour to deliver a first-class member experience.
- Tailor-made communication and other resources helps connect with members and boost engagement.
- Helpful forecasting tools help make retirement planning easy.
- Make complex stories simple with language members understand and video personalisation.
- Harness the power of an analytics suite that deliver valuable insights.
- A safe and secure environment for members to effortlessly access and manage their pension accounts.
The project
Heywood and Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund have been working closely together for several years. As a long-standing pension administration client, Heywood was aware of the Fund’s desire to develop an online member portal.
Once funding had been secured, Heywood quickly responded with a proposal. Timing was everything. With Heywood’s new transformational member experience platform set for launch, it was the perfect opportunity for Barking and Dagenham to be one of its first adopters.
Barking and Dagenham were also keen to take advantage of Heywood’s innovative Video ABS functionality. This, combined with the Fund’s first online portal, would help transform the way members effortlessly access and engage with vital pension information online.
Our approach
With annual benefit statements (ABS) due to be distributed to members by the end of August, there was a deadline set for the end of July 2023 for a successful launch of the new platform. In this window, a communication programme would also have to be developed and distributed to help members register and access the platform.
As the project progressed, Heywood and the team at Barking and Dagenham held weekly meetings which helped maintain regular communication, track progress, and troubleshoot.
In April 2023, the platform was ready for testing. During a 12-week window, Barking and Dagenham gained access to the system, staff could be fully trained, and the platform could be customised with the Fund’s branding. Crucially, keywords and phrases could be tailored throughout the platform as each authority may have their own terminology. This helped the Fund retain a consistent tone of voice.
Following a successful testing period, the Fund was ready to go live.
Initially, a communication was issued to one employer with 250 members – an additional layer of testing to ensure that the language and terminology of the communications resonated with the audience.
Heywood helped produce a simple step-by-step guide for members on how to register, and a full roll-out followed the week after. Each member received a communication with a unique activation key to allow for a successful registration.
As an early adopter of the platform, Barking and Dagenham were able to relay feedback and queries to Heywood’s service desk with accelerated SLAs.
The results
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund is now fully operational with its new transformational member engagement platform.
Within the first month alone, over 1,600 members had registered and were active on the platform – a figure that the Fund is very pleased with. The in-house team at Barking and Dagenham was on hand to assist with members’ queries, helping them get online in no time.
Member feedback has been resoundingly positive, with the user-intuitive nature of the platform helping them navigate to where they need to be.
Barking and Dagenham Pension Fund is a leading example of how pension schemes can use online member portals to transform the way they engage with their members. The Fund’s new platform is easy to use and provides members with access to all the information they need about their pension.
"Within the first month alone, over 1,600 members had registered and were active on the platform"
Project snapshot
Custom branding
The platform was customised with the Fund’s branding, helping to retain a consistent look and feel.
Clear communication
A simple step-by-step guide was created to help members register
12 week testing window
After a 12 week testing window, the fund were ready to meet an August 2023 deadline for launch.
1,600
In the first month alone, more than 1,600 members were actively using the platform.
6,000
The Fund are now able to distribute 6,000 annual benefit statements digitally, instead of printing and posting.
The Barking & Dagenham Experience
We recently launched Heywood’s new transformational member engagement platform for our active pension members. Having never had a member self-service before, we were apprehensive about undertaking such a major project. However, with the dedicated Heywood team that we worked with, the project was implemented and launched to our members successfully. We like that the portal was fully adaptable to be customised to our corporate colours, branding and preferred wording.
We have received very positive feedback from our members. The fact that they can perform their own retirement calculations will ease some of the pressures on the team. Issuing our annual benefits statements on the portal has also resulted in significant cost savings and avoidance of possible data breaches."
- Justine Spring | Pensions Manager
.png)