Digital transformation: connecting the dots

This article was first published on FS Super on Friday, 22 March 2024

The key to digital transformation

Designing digital experiences in the life insurance and superannuation sector involves carefully considering and adapting to members' evolving needs and expectations.

For me, the sweet spot for digital transformation is to understand real customer problems and design improvements that deliver better outcomes across all components of the value chain. While it's important to deploy emerging technologies as they become available, the focus should be on incremental change that provides swift improvements to members.

As with most services in today's economy, superannuation fund members have come to expect personalised, fast and secure digital experiences.

And, for our sector, there are significant opportunities to use digital innovation that responds to our complex ecosystem, where a range of service providers deliver different aspects of the member experience. Emerging technology can reduce manual processing, navigate legacy systems, and help members feel connected to their life insurance to better self-manage their cover.

As we found, when we were building our digital platform, TAL Connect, streamlining and optimising the user experience involves innovation informed by human-centric design and insights to make it easier for members to engage confidently with their insurance.

Listening to partners and members

Successful digital transformation requires a significant amount of research and development. For us, that has involved gathering insights about our products, processes and experiences, listening to our partners and understanding the changing needs and circumstances of members.

Effective research often includes a mix of inputs such as member surveys, interactive prototype testing, online language grading, user data analysis and feedback from customer-facing teams. It's also important to consider member needs and experiences across a range of life stages, as well as financial education levels.

The research findings can then be translated into product simplifications, operational process improvements and digital experiences that deliver service excellence. And by being open to possibilities and accepting feedback from our partners, members and internal teams, we're able to design solutions that make these experiences simpler and more intuitive.

Case study: Connecting the dots to improve the experience

Through our own research and development process, we wanted to find out the level of understanding members have of life insurance terminology and concepts, as well as the drivers for their decisions around life insurance. We also wanted to understand any challenges they face when interacting with their insurance and completing key actions.

Contrary to our expectations, we discovered that the biggest pain point for members wasn't the speed at which journeys could be completed - for instance, the number of clicks for next steps or the number of questions being asked of them. Rather, it was that members weren't confident in their understanding of insurance concepts. So, we focused on introducing context and personalisation into their experience.

These kinds of insights are critical when developing digital experiences, so we can be targeted in addressing members' needs at each step of the journey. Since launching TAL Connect, we're excited to see that journey completion rates have already increased, due to the platform's considered design and features that help members navigate the experience.

Our efforts to streamline the insurance journey and automate back-end processes, have made it simpler for members to interact with us. For example, we're seeing around 13% more members completing their applications to tailor their insurance, as they get access, giving them the peace of mind that comes from having the right cover in place.

Setting the foundations of the future

The digital era provides a great opportunity for the group insurance industry to reframe itself. To deliver truly effective digital experiences, our use of technology needs to focus on addressing member needs - to test, learn and make iterations along the way.

It's absolutely critical for all stakeholders across the ecosystem - including superannuation funds, insurers, administrators and other parties - to work together to invest in the digital experience members expect and deserve, while balancing the operational realities of our industry. By listening to members and each other, we can create seamless journeys that optimise lifelong member engagement - from when they first join their fund and right into their retirement.

About Jenny

Jenny Nguyen’s career of more than 16 years in the superannuation and life insurance industry spans a number of roles across administration, digital, marketing, client management and business development, where she honed her drive to support partners to deliver the best member outcomes. As General Manager of Digital Experience, she is focused on aligning our technology roadmaps and ensuring that our digital solutions are robust, secure, and designed with members in mind.