Pension communications through ITP/Customer Correspondence Management

Uniform communication with your customers in the way the customer chooses. Using mail, email, text messaging, portals, fax and print. Factoring in current legislation, corporate regulations and changing social legislation. Without having to adapt or update your old applications. Aia Software’s ITP/CCM makes it possible.

Pension communications: A major challenge

Pension funds and pension insurers are facing a major challenge in their communications with their members and policyholders: pension schemes have had a negative press in recent times, social legislation is subject to continuous changes, and people’s awareness of their pension situation is waning. Only those members who are nearing retirement take an active interest in the often complex information relating to their pension. The mandatory introductory letter with set content requirements, and the Uniform Pension Summary were devised to make the information more convenient to consult, better readable, and improve understandability.

Success factors for pension communications: use multi-channeling and data recording to get through to the customer

Information is processed better when offered in a way that matches the recipient’s media behavior. Multi-channeling has proven to be particularly useful in the insurance sector, enabling policyholders to access a web portal and check the progress of, for example, a claim settlement, or be kept up to date by email or text messaging. Pension communications revolve around making the message ‘know your pension situation’ register with customers. Delivering that message using a channel that suits a particular customer, i.e. tying in with that customer’s communication preferences,will boost the chance of the message actually registering.

It is therefore essential to record customers’ preferences and the company’s communication regulations properly. The second step is actually getting through to customers. The IT environment can support the business in that.

How to do that

Starting point

Many companies struggle with correspondence from legacy systems. Customer details are often never updated in these systems when changes are made in the CRM system. This leads to a situation where the legacy application, despite different customer preferences recorded in the CRM system, still sends information out to a customer on paper instead of by email, for example.

The solution: ITP/CCM

Customers expect companies to use the communication options they stipulated in their preferences. ITP/CCM is the answer. All output of existing applications is gathered within ITP/CCM. A link to the CRM system ensures that a customer’s communication profile is used in the best way possible.

Based on this profile and the communication regulations laid down by the business, ITP/CCM will analyze, manage, (re)combine and possibly improve and distribute all of the company’s output. This enables the use of modern communication channels, such as email or portals, from legacy applications, without these requiring any adjustments. Recording all available information in one customer profile, and linking it to the different output systems, guarantees that all output meets customers’ wishes.

A real-life example

Suppose Mr Jones has annuity insurance...

ITP/CCM in action: Suppose Mr Jones has taken out annuity insurance. Due to changes to his details, Mr Jones will be sent a new policy sheet. A commercial mailing is also scheduled to be sent out at the same time. ITP/CCM clusters these two documents and ensures they are not sent to Mr Jones separately, but rather in one envelope. Or, if Mr Jones so desires, attached as PDFs to one single email. This makes correspondence with Mr Jones a lot more personal, and clustering documents also means the company saves on postal charges.