Alexa, ask Smart Pension how my pension is doing?

Increasing member engagement is a hot topic in pensions. Let's face it, pensions are not a fun subject, my teenage daughter rightly rolls her eyes when I try and explain what I do. Soon she will have a job and she too will have a workplace pension. Maybe even a Smart Pension, wouldn't that be amusing...

Speaking to people in a way they want to hear is often hard to do. As a parent, you know best, but sometimes you have to change your approach to speak to your kids. Sometimes you need to adapt to ensure your message is heard in a way they want to hear it.

This logic is true in many relationships and more and more I have seen it with members and their pensions. Specifically, I am talking about UK employees with a pension. A topic I bang on about at work is how we stack up to America (in the context of awareness). In the US people chat in bars about their dental and health care they get from their employer, it's a badge of honor you get out and lay on the table much like you do your smartphone. In the UK we don't do that, we like to queue for things, we don't compare benefits and we most certainly don't discuss our finances in public. But I believe that will change now that everyone who wants one has a pension. When the iPhone first came out only the privileged few had one, now anyone can have a smartphone, so you can start to compare features with your friends. This is the next chapter in the AE story.

I was recently looking at our data for an exercise for the DWP and as stupid as this sounds I found myself saying "it's bloody working!" This whole AE thing has legs. Young people, who were previously not saving suddenly have money put aside and if they carry on, they'll have something they own to use in retirement. I know this is fundamentally our job, but it truly is rewarding when you see it in action.

So this takes us to the next step, how to keep people engaged with their pension? In truth, there are many answers to this question. Whilst the industry knows we have to do more than just the one letter per year, there is no one shoe fits all approach after this. People are different. What we do know is that the younger generation, the people AE was designed for want something new and we've had fun recently finding that out.

Will (our MD) and I have a shared passion for home automation and the associated innovation it can bring. Finding a way of connecting this thinking with our API seemed an obvious next step.

Enter our Alexa Skill.

Much to my wife's annoyance, our house is fully automated. As we drive home our lights turn on triggered by geofencing, we can ask Alexa to warm the house up and my wife uses Alexa to ensure our supper does not burn (otherwise our Alexa linked fire detectors kick in). But it is our kids that really spend the Alexa coins, getting her to help them with their homework or simply playing music and TV. In the way they have replaced BBC with YouTube, they adopt the next new thing with grace.

Being able to ask Alexa how your pension is doing is no different to asking what the weather is like tomorrow. This nugget sized, quick access information is what the people at the beginning of this journey want and our API was ready and waiting. Alexa is simply a verbal interface to the data our members can access via our website/API currently. In rudimentary terms, after you have linked your Smart Pension account with our Alexa skill (via the security protocol OAuth 2) you are then connected to the same endpoints used by our member portal. Each time you read text on our member portal it is a GET request to the API returning your information to the page, the Alexa Skill simply replaces the browser with a voice command to the same GET request.

Ask Alexa for a summary and she will detail how much you (and your employer) have contributed toward your pension scheme, or how much you put in last month or if you are missing out on a matched contribution offered by your employer. If you are new to pensions you can ask her to play an introduction video (with an Echo Spot or Show device). You can even ask her to increase your pension contribution percentage and in real-time she will update the database and send you and your payroll administrator an email having done so. This is the same function we provide on the website, a POST request to the relevant endpoint, you are simply using your voice in place of the keyboard and mouse.

Plus with the Alexa ecosystem moving into phones you can now pick up your mobile and get the same response. There must be a geeky joke about Hal and playing chess, but suddenly that seems old hat...

This is just quicker and more convenient than going to your laptop. As silly as that sounds, Netflix measure down to the last fraction of a second how long you spend browsing their content before you lose interest. We're obviously not Netflix, but our members use Netflix and have the same demands and behavioral traits with every day-to-day interaction. Those paper-based statements are not getting read for the same reason.

So to clarify, this was not a PR stunt, this was data-driven, people who use us want something new and exciting. Our API allows us to turn these things on securely with relative ease. Finding new and innovative ways to interact with our platform is our agenda for 2018 so watch out for the next update!

If you have a Smart Pension scheme and have an Amazon account you can download our free Alexa Skill here. Have fun!