Public Pension Challenges: Servicing Members with Campaign Management and CRM

Introduction

In the past two blogs of our “Public Pension Challenges” series, I’ve addressed some of the specific challenges that the roughly 5,000 U.S. public sector retirement systems face today, namely the need for operations modernization as well as their lack of robust member self-service.ⁱ With the substantial wave of baby boomer public servants approaching retirement, these systems need sophisticated, next-generation platforms to fulfill their purpose: to allow millions of public sector workers nationwide to retire with the financial security, peace of mind, and dignity to enjoy their golden years. But the necessary elements to ensure that members receive up-to-date, targeted communications about their benefits, and that administrators collect member activity and demographic data as a “single source of truth” for future personalized campaigns, are comprehensive campaign and customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. Campaign management provides secure, bi-directional, omni-communication that allows pension administrators to create and deliver targeted campaign messaging for responsive member care as well as retirement process instruction, throughout members’ careers and post-retirement. With robust CRM capabilities, administrators can develop complete profiles of member activity and demographics, to analyze and then personalize future digital member experiences. Combined, campaign management and CRM can build a secure repository for member data, personas, and analytics, as well as an ongoing, collaborative communications experience.

Campaign Management and CRM: a Powerful Combination

Public pension retirement systems have two primary obligations to their members:

1. To provide critical retirement process information to members pre- and post-retirement, so they can make appropriate planning decisions. This includes keeping members fully informed of the process throughout their active public sector careers, with timely alerts about deadlines, contributions, service time records, and legislation that could affect their eligibility and overall payouts.
2. To advise on potential opportunities and best practices, including supplemental plans and service credits. Even if members themselves are not proactive, the system should be proactive on their behalf, by offering financial simulations and calculation tools so members always have complete retirement information at their disposal, via safe, secure portals.

Optimum campaign management components can support emails, texts, physical letters, and secure messages, and work with digital self-service to encourage ongoing member engagement for ultimate pension mission success. Where CRM comes in is as a comprehensive repository for maintaining up-to-date contact information, so member benefits can be regularly dispensed and promptly received. Pension systems that fail to perform proper due diligence on locating members for benefit payouts can receive stiff penalties, including substantial, multimillion-dollar fines for noncompliance.

With a strong CRM infrastructure, systems can also develop a complete paper trail of retirement activity for each member account, to provide thorough, transparent reports for both plan participants and regulators. Administrators can also track member activity and analyze the resulting data to better understand participant preferences for future personalized campaigns that will encourage member engagement and proactive retirement preparation.

Final Thoughts

Targeted campaign management combined with robust CRM capabilities can boost pension plan efficiency and performance, while improving services for administrators and members alike. By taking advantage of these capabilities for personalized communication, accurate data collection, analysis, and reporting, pension administrators can build and maintain collaborative ecosystems that can lay the foundation for a sound retirement for millions of U.S. public sector workers for years to come.

To see how V3locity can streamline your public pension administration, secure your data, and revolutionize your system’s technology in one integrated solution, click here.

ⁱ States Info, https://www.nasra.org/states