With the big APRA-regulated funds now moving to the top of the list of taxpaying entities, they are realising the importance of working with their custodians to ensure after-tax investment decisions deliver for their members.
Beijing has taken some big IT strides to be a formidable challenge to the West. What is holding it back is an increasingly centralised approach to innovation, restricting the spread of new technologies that foster productivity and progress.
More help on the way for funds to retain members
(pictured: Stephen Mackley)
Thanks largely to their big administrators and systems providers, super funds have a chance of catching up with the bank-owned retail platforms in the use of data analysis to aid member retention and acquisition.
Financial Synergy, the systems provider whose 30 clients have a total of about four million members, is introducing the OpenText big data function to its platform. Like competitor Link Group’s Empirics company – which is part of the digital and data services division – Financial Synergy’s deal with OpenText will allow funds to analyse member activity and other information to predict their behaviour for things such as investment switching, account changes, new service requests and redemptions.
As an example, if a member checks his or her account balance several times over, say, a couple of weeks, there is a good chance he or she is considering moving funds. This may give the existing fund’s financial planners the chance to make contact and discuss the subject.
Initially, all new Financial Synergy customers will have the OpenText functionality embedded in their software (cloud software as a service). Existing customers can have it added in, for a low rate negotiated by Financial Synergy with the US-based OpenText company. It will become part of the Acurity platform.
Bank-owned platforms have had several advantages over industry, government and other not-for-profits in the past, including big-spending technology departments and bank online and branch banking systems. Bank platforms can provide member super information right alongside their bank statements and, in retirement, can link transactions between the two.
Some technologists say that institutions must go to the information sources which their customers want to use – even if it’s Facebook – rather than trying to drive them to their own websites. With such a trend, banks will be asked to put all sorts of new information on their customer online account pages. Whether or not they do is another question.
Also, new fintech SMSF admin systems offer the allure of very low prices for simple online services, which is probably exacerbating the losses among higher-balance super fund members to set up their own SMSF.
Stephen Mackley, Financial Synergy’s chief executive, said: “Embedding OpenText big data analytics into Acurity will allow superannuation funds of all sizes and types to affordably discover the hidden value of their data. They will have far greater capacity to retain existing customers and expand potential market share as they will know what happened, what’s happening and what will happen.
“We are offering a powerfully flexible tool with which our clients can use strategic, predictive knowledge to create new, efficient business models. It will also enable deeper segmentation, to ‘market of one’ levels of customer service.”
