More than 80 per cent of members would consider seeking scaled financial advice, according to a study conducted by State Super Financial Services (SSFS).
With a membership base of around 60,000 people from the Australian public sector, the research finding supports its push to develop new technology-enabled scaled offerings.
“It was an interesting statistic and that’s one of the reasons why we’re putting so much effort ourselves into developing that capability to deliver scaled advice effectively and efficiently for our clients,” says Michael Monaghan, SSFS managing director.
Conducted in April this year by CoreData, the study sampled 2500 public sector employees.
“I have always had that inkling, but this is the first time I’ve seen such a strong research result, that found it’s attractive to a lot of people,” Monaghan says. He adds that even among surveyed members that are over 55 years of age, the number interested in scaled advice was 67 per cent.
“Another piece of research that really gels with our experience over many years is that, particularly around the retirement segment, people like to establish a personal relationship with a face-to-face meeting. After that, they’re quite happy to do stuff remotely, via phone, or even self-serve.
“So that’s also driving our delivery models on how we can make it easier for clients to interact with us in the way that they want to.”
For the last six months, SSFS has been conducting a major upgrade of its technology systems and processes with a view to providing better access to financial advice among its members.
Monaghan explains this is due to roll out in February next year with a pilot program, “and then assuming it all works well, we’ll do it in groups of our offices over the next 28 months.”
Given the older demographic of its member base, he says that improving its penetration among younger audiences is also part of this initiative.
“Yes, we’d like to be able to extend our offering to younger groups,” he says.
“Eighty-five per cent of the younger members would consider an offering of scaled advice.
“Most other funds have a younger demographic than we do. That’s where having this capability to very efficiently deliver scaled in intra-fund advice would be potentially quite handy.”
Monaghan also suggests that over time SSFS may also be able to extend its financial capabilities to other super funds. This potential is driven by its higher proportion of financial planners to members.
With around 160 planners to its 60,000 members, “this is probably the highest proportion of any of the large groups”, he says.
“We’ve got a lot more planners and a lot less members,” he says.
“It’s an interesting dynamic. The challenge is how to engage directly with the members. That’s where we might be able to help other funds, we’ve got a critical mass of financial planners already.
He reveals SSFS is already in talks with some industry funds and other public sector funds.
“The technology investment, I think, will give us capacity to service a much bigger number of clients than we do today,” he says.
