Three years into his post, Aegon UK CEO Mike Holliday-Williams sees three priorities for asset growth, which are, in order of significance, new scheme wins, getting existing members to consolidate and persuading members to stay with Aegon through decumulation.
Holliday-Williams says: “The big numbers come out of winning new schemes and we had record growth, net flow growth last year 46 per cent, up £2.2bn net growth came from new schemes.”
But he does not see entering the fray in the pensions dashboards battleground as necessary, seeing the initiative as more of an incremental change than a Big Bang.
“We have grown 400,000 members in the last three years, and we don’t have to market for that. We have people consolidating pensions and so what are those consolidation journeys that we’ve got already? How do you make them easier? How do you improve them with the technology that we’re launching?”
Holliday-Williams points out that consolidator rivals without an existing book have a tougher challenge to gain customers.
“You’ve got pension providers marketing left, right and centre. Our challenge is how do we help our own customers consolidate? So it might not be a dashboard in its purest sense that we launch. It will be how do we improve the consolidation journey, using the data that we’ve got and using the dashboard that is out there,” he says.
Dashboards will be one part of the engagement process for members, but there are many other touch points for providers to deepen trust and understanding with members, he says.
“Our focus is on complete engagement from the minute we welcome you to understand, you know, nudging to do the right behaviour, nudging to you to make sure that you go online in the first place, nudging to make sure you get the app so that you can see your performance and understand nomination of beneficiaries,” he adds.
The app is now available to all members, across both GPP and master trust.
“We’ve added Isas into that as well, which is necessary in the employers market. But the consolidation journey is the big area for us. Because actually it’s quite complex today in terms of the paper, the manual processes, searching other pension providers. Maybe some of the PensionBees in the market have been working harder at that. We have a process in place but it’s an area where we can definitely make it easier and really improve. But you need that engagement in the first place. So one of the things we’ve done is launch what we call Aegon Digital Experience or ADX, the new employer and employee portal.
“It’s using new architecture, and is live with some employers and will be rolled out to employers and employees, replacing the current online portal.”
Holliday-Williams’ aim is to combine this with the Pensions Geeks content – GeeksTV went live this week – and the financial wellbeing insights the provider has been researching – to deepen the customer relationship.”
So what does Holliday-Williams see as the USP that will drive pension savers to consolidate with a particular provider – price, brand, simplicity?
“It is a bit of all of those. But if you don’t have a relationship in the first place it is going to be harder. You have got to be big and trusted. And what’s that company’s attitude to net zero? Do they have a climate roadmap?,” he says.
Holliday-Williams has some sympathy for competitors that have taken media flak for poor service standards of late.
“Coming out of the pandemic it was quite tricky. Like everybody, we’ve had lumps in the road as staff shortages have been there. But we’re really pleased with the service that we’re delivering. And you’re not going to grow if you’re not going to get that service. So getting the basics right is key to our strategy.”