Accelerating tech transformations in superannuation: Building the right foundation

In today’s dynamic technology landscape, speed is everything. Organisations often fixate on speeding up the time to market, faster development or releasing value earlier.

But, as highlighted in our first blog of this series, you can’t start to accelerate towards your goal without first knowing your starting point. Getting a clear picture of your technology estate now through a digital health check can be a vital first step to achieving next-generational change.

Now that you understand your current technology estate and have a digital itinerary to guide your way, how can you accelerate your transformation? The answer lies in establishing strong foundations across technologies, processes, and culture.

The importance of building strong foundations

In Australia’s finance and superannuation sector, innovation while maintaining regulatory compliance is key. But it isn’t easy and accelerating next-gen change doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach. At a recent event, sector leaders shared their insights and emphasised the importance of solid technology and cultural foundations. These foundations are crucial for organisations looking to create differentiated customer engagement and leverage emerging technologies such as AI to drive cutting-edge innovations and increase operational efficiency.

Key foundations for success

To maximise the impact and business value of transformative new tools and technologies, organisations need to ensure the following foundations are in place.

• Data quality and availability: Invest in robust data platforms to ensure data is highly accessible, usable and reliable.
• Data-Driven Approach: Use delivery metrics such as DORA or customer feedback to focus resources, track progress and optimise efforts.
• Security: Build security into every aspect of the process to safeguard tech and data.
• Standardised Technology: Avoid technology anarchy by aligning and standardising the tech stack, providing teams with guardrails and best practices to optimise collaboration.
• Skilled Team: Focus on developing your teams with the right skills to utilise new technologies effectively.
• Culture: Foster an internal culture that embraces innovation and change.

Small changes, big impact

Starting small can lead to significant transformation. A superannuation fund we worked with faced costly delays in its security architecture, significantly hindering growth. By unblocking bottlenecks in the process, streamlining requirements sharing and introducing a fast-track process for low-risk projects, we reduced average decision times from twelve weeks to just three. This enables the super fund to quickly respond to new regulations in the sector, maintain compliance and capitalise on new opportunities to enhance returns for its members.

Similarly at Travelopia, investing in a four-month project to create a new digital data platform to create personalised customer experiences delivered immediate results. Sales increased by 30% in the first three months and the cost of the project was recovered in less than six months. It also provided the foundation for further data-enabled transformation, including the introduction of GenAI capabilities.

Enhancing superannuation regulatory compliance through AI

AI holds enormous potential in the finance and superannuation sector, particularly in traditionally resource-intensive areas like complaints handling. We’ve developed an AI tool for super funds that can analyse unstructured data from multiple customer channels—calls, forms, and messages— and then categorise and triage the complaints. It provides the complaint handler with an action plan for the next steps, a response template and a timeline, all based on Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) regulatory requirements.

A dashboard view also provides super funds with a holistic view of the complaints received, enabling them to spot patterns and areas for improvement and act immediately on any complaint that is approaching a regulatory deadline. With the potential to be implemented at a fund in just 12 weeks, the tool could transform the complaints process and enable the fund to deliver better, faster responses while maintaining regulatory compliance.

But, to be effective and provide business value, it needs the right underlying technology foundations – access to high-quality data, a culture of innovation and robust security.

Accelerating your digital transformation

Laying the groundwork now will allow your organisation to innovate and adopt next-gen technologies, such as AI, with confidence. In our next blog, we’ll explore how optimising cloud capabilities can further accelerate digital transformation for superannuation funds.

Interested in learning more? Contact us now to start your journey. Or join us at the ASFA Conference in Sydney from November 19-21, 2024, where we’ll be demoing our AI complaints management tool and sharing insights on how to accelerate digital change in superannuation.