Technology key to corporate super business

Super funds and corporate super advisers could use technology to gain further business, according to BIT Group business development manager Morne Barnes.

Big data technology that individualised member statements could help expand a corporate super base, he said.

Historically, corporate super advisers had concentrated on employees at the top end of a company's remuneration chain, Barnes said. However, adopting technology that analysed and aggregated data in a personalised way — through web portals and member statements — could cut across the employee base.

"What happened in the past was corporate super advisers provided a good service to the top earners in the company, but the lower class employees didn't get that much love," Barnes said.

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"It helps a lot of companies that do tender for new corporate plans because they can talk around the benefits it brings to their member base — which corporates are a lot more open to because they know you would be servicing all their employees better."

However, statements that relied on member engagement with no personalisation often had little effect, according to Barnes.

"In a lot of cases, it hasn't been communicated very well across the whole employee base. There might have been an initial communication when it was all set up, but then there was no ongoing relationship — or the relationship was just with the high member balances where advisers could see the most benefit in servicing them," he said.

"The reality is that those employee benefits must be communicated regularly for people to be aware of them and for people to make use of them."

Technology could also capture member preferences and specific advice requests for super funds in order to feed these back to their advisers to develop personalised advice, Barnes said.