The challenge of winning 'pension attention

Workplace pension saving levels have never been higher, but, despite previous efforts by the industry, government and money guidance bodies, engagement with pensions is still quite low. Over half the public struggle to find their pension information and only 20% are confident they’re saving enough for retirement.

Pensions Dashboards have the potential to be a major breakthrough for engagement in the future, and various regulatory disclosures have been recently introduced to improve transparency and the information savers can find out about their schemes: TCFD, the Implementation Statement and the Chair’s statement. But, while these are great resources for the engaged, they are not likely to tempt uninitiated people to engage with their workplace pension from the get go.

Similarly, annual benefit statements provide valuable and timely information for savers, but often go unread or wallow in the bottom drawer with jumbled up pay slips and old cinema tickets. Proposals to simplify statements and send paper copies in coloured envelopes during an annual benefit statement season have been acknowledged to be difficult for schemes to administer and unlikely to meaningfully lift the bar in the digital age.

Against that backdrop, now is the time to try something new and bold to reach the unengaged.

With support from some of the best-known brands in the pensions industry, the PLSA and the ABI have joined forces to build a campaign that encourages everyone with an interest in helping people have a better income retirement to unite behind a single message: to tell savers to ‘PAY YOUR PENSION SOME ATTENTION’.

The campaign aims to break through the public’s lack of interest and make pensions a talking point for people going about their everyday lives.

The success of the Pension Attention campaign hinges on a collaborative effort from across the industry to raise the volume and make some noise about the power of pensions.

We ask the industry to support the campaign by maximising its reach, not only by sharing and supporting communications coming from the campaign itself, especially on social media, but by aligning behind the central message in your own marketing, events and education activity.

Logos are already available to interested parties to use in your digital activity, such as on webpages and in consumer comms, and a toolkit of other resources will also be downloadable from the campaign website, once it is launched.

Wherever your spokespeople are talking about pensions in the media or other public forums, in whatever content you produce, there are opportunities for the campaign messages to be amplified.

Initially the objectives are simple – to help people reconnect with their pensions. In particular, savers should:

• Feel good about having a pension
• Be sure their personal details are up-to-date
• Know what they have and might need

Kicking off with what is expected to be an eye-catching activation by an unexpected brand ambassador in early September, the campaign aims to speak to savers the pensions industry normally struggles to reach. Intended as a three-year initiative, it will run annually from Pensions Awareness Week in September through to Talk Money Week in November.

That means the PLSA’s Annual Conference is right in the middle of the campaign ‘season’ and will be a targeted focal point.

The conference will include sessions on the campaign – and about member engagement more widely – that will be unmissable for people in marketing, brand awareness, member communications, public relations, digital, social media and content creation roles.

On Wednesday 12 October, the ‘Pensions Time’ panel will see BBC Question Time Presenter Fiona Bruce probe leading pensions policy experts including PLSA Chair and Managing Director for Workplace Savings at Aviva, Emma Douglas, and PLSA Policy Board member and Director of Reward and Employment at NatWest, Carol Young, about how the industry can promote better public understanding about pensions.

On Thursday 13 October some of the UK’s best known personal finance journalists and commentators including the Presenter of BBC’s Money Box Paul Lewis, the Financial Times’s Consumer Editor Claer Barrett, and Financial Planner and Author Makala Green, will challenge the industry to break the rules of pension engagement and fight back against pensions’ boring image problem.

There will also be opportunities in the many networking breaks to speak to industry peers about the creative ways they are getting their brands behind the Pay Your Pension Some Attention campaign.

Making pensions part of a wider conversation about lifestyle, and getting coverage beyond just the personal finance pages, requires us to make a big noise with something different. The Annual Conference is a great opportunity to learn how your peers are helping to make a difference to people’s financial lives through better member engagement.

Sign up here.