Cloud computing is transforming how Australia’s businesses operate, offering greater flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness compared to on-premise systems. 

With 70% of businesses using cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives,  Gartner is predicting that public cloud spending will reach A$23.2bn in Australia this year, up 19.3% from 2023.

Cloud isn’t just another IT tool – it has the potential to be transformative across all industries, including finance and superannuation. However, as highlighted in our earlier blogs, understanding your current situation and laying solid foundations is essential before embarking on a digital transformation.

In this third blog of the series, we’ll explore how finance organisations and superannuation funds can optimise and scale the cloud to unlock greater business value.

The importance of a cloud strategy

Cloud is a top focus for CIOs, with 79% listing it as their second-largest tech funding priority after cybersecurity. Despite its advantages, we regularly hear from our clients that their cloud costs are continuing to rise without returning the expected business value. Why? Because simply lifting and shifting everything to the cloud without a strategy leads to inefficiencies. 

In the early stages of cloud adoption, many companies used it for one or two limited purposes without giving too much thought to the overall architecture or configuration. But as businesses grow and add on more cloud applications, a lack of a cohesive strategy can lead to inefficiencies and spiralling costs. 

As we found in the first blog, conducting a comprehensive cloud health check is key to understanding your current environment and defining an effective strategy. Cloud computing isn’t just about moving away from on-prem systems—it’s about preparing the groundwork to enable future innovations and meet business goals.

Optimisation for the future

Think of it this way – if you want a supercar designed for speed you might spend a lot of time and resources crafting the body to maximise its aerodynamic qualities. But if you then install a tiny, low-powered engine, you won’t get the speed and acceleration you expect from a supercar. You’ll have wasted all that money and effort.

It’s the same with cloud computing. For businesses wanting to perform complex tasks in the cloud or use cutting-edge AI technologies, cloud infrastructure optimisation is critical. Without the right cloud foundations, these innovations won’t deliver their full potential and could end up being costly.

Tools like automation, consistent monitoring, and regular testing within Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines are essential cloud optimisation steps for speeding up deployment times and creating more reliable systems.

Maximising the unique functionality of the cloud to simplify repeatable tasks across an organisation can also make a huge difference. By establishing digital platforms with paved roads—standardised processes that ensure consistent deployment and development across teams—organisations can further improve cloud value, accelerate time to market, and reduce costs.

Governance and security regulations can also be implemented within these paved roads, helping organisations maintain compliance and security best practices and limit the blast radius of security incidents.  In contrast to bespoke on-prem systems, where incidents could have catastrophic consequences, the cloud makes it easier to separate and contain services, reducing the overall impact on business operations, costs and reputational damage.

Cloud computing for finance and superannuation

Within the highly regulated and increasingly competitive landscapes of finance and superannuation,  an optimised cloud enables faster innovation, better compliance and improved service reliability. 

For example, Spirit Super’s move to the cloud enabled it to grow and scale its platform with the business while remaining adaptable to regulatory changes. By optimising its cloud processes from the outset, we helped Spirit Super increase its team capacity for new initiatives from 5% to 66%, eliminate downtime and create reliable cloud-native services in just three months. It’s provided the catalyst for Spirit Super’s cloud platform development and is enabling it to deliver greater value for its members. 

Discover more cloud optimisation strategies at the ASFA Conference 

Cloud has endless transformation potential but to fully unlock its business value, organisations need a clear strategy for optimisation – whether that means reducing cloud costs, focusing on security and compliance or speeding up product development. 

For superannuation funds looking to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market through new innovation and technology, optimising the cloud is vital step on this journey.

Interested in finding out how to optimise and scale your cloud capabilities? Contact us today or join us at the ASFA Conference in Sydney from November 19-21, 2024, where we’ll be demoing our AI-enabled superannuation complaints management concept and exploring cloud optimisation approaches.

The superannuation sector is no stranger to complex challenges and transformations. In the past 30 years funds have navigated ever-changing regulatory frameworks, weathered multiple global financial crises and continuously strived to deliver more for their members.  

In 2024, superannuation funds find themselves in an increasingly digital-focussed world. Despite technological advances in the financial sector, including online and mobile banking, regular interaction engagement with superannuation funds remains uncommon. Around 33% of Australians check their super balance once every three months, and one in 10 never check it at all.

Delivering lifelong value to members and super funds through digital transformation 

As competition in the sector increases and capacity for advice services expands, super funds must embrace digital transformation as an enabler for future success. 

Improved data pipelines can help funds to help them better understand members at every stage of their employment lifecycle. By creating tailored, user journeys, technology can also help simplify services and make it easier for members to navigate their superannuation, accessing the information, support or services they need when needed. Digital transformation can help funds not only connect with their members but empower them to boost their superannuation balance and be proactive about their financial future. 

That’s why we created our latest eBook focused on advising superannuation funds to leverage data-driven insights to design seamless customer journeys, create tailored services and drive lifelong value for members

What is the eBook about and how can it help me?

Our eBook “Accelerating Superannuation’s Digital Transformation” combines our hands-on experience with detailed return on investment statistics and insights from industry experts. It aims to support and inspire funds to:

• Leverage data and technology to better understand member journeys.
• Strengthen engagement and empower members with targeted advice.
• Build flexible, scalable and secure services with event-driven architecture.
• And remain competitive in a constantly changing landscape.

The ebook also delves into our Super Accelerator programme,  a comprehensive package of predefined, ready-to-use modules designed to help superannuation funds build, deploy, and run event-driven services in just 12 weeks. Our Accelerator has already helped super funds on their digital transformation journey, with the book detailing case studies from Spirit Super and Employment Hero.

Ready to accelerate your digital transformation?

Download the ebook to unlock the potential of digital transformation in superannuation. 

You can find out more about our Super Accelerator programme and our work with the superannuation sector on our dedicated superannuation webpage.

If you’re ready to accelerate your digital transformation and harness the power of data-driven decisions to empower your members throughout their employment lifecycle, contact the team at Equal Experts Australia now.

When you’re a new parent, enjoying a long, leisurely retirement seems a lifetime away. And, let’s be honest, who’s thinking about how to maximise their retirement fund when there is a crying newborn demanding their attention? 

Superannuation funds were certainly the last thing on our minds when my wife Samantha and I welcomed our two children into the world. We were too busy getting to grips with feeding schedules, bedtime routines and the joys of parenthood. But, with Samantha taking maternity leave from her job as a firefighter (swapping saving lives for an even harder, more exhausting job as a mum), her superannuation contributions paused. We watched as my retirement pot continued to grow while hers stalled.

But this isn’t an uncommon experience. It’s a reality for millions of Australian women each year. 

Women retire with 24% less super than men on average

Research by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work found that women earn $136,000 less in superannuation over their working lives than men, based on median income data. Alongside the impact of the gender pay gap, women are more likely to take longer breaks from full-time employment due to maternity leave and the ongoing demands of raising a family, with a 55% drop in earnings for mothers in the five years following childbirth. 

Fewer earnings and less time spent in the workforce means new mums are saving less money in their super funds. When you factor in the impact of compounding interest, even a small reduction in contributions or a $75 fund fee paid unnecessarily can have a significant impact at retirement time. When you scale that up to the 300,000 women giving birth each year, it’s millions of dollars lost. 

But the superannuation sector is working to address this issue. Fund providers recognise that a person’s employment isn’t static – it’s a journey with many stops, changes of direction and differing priorities on the way. To deliver the best services for their members, including women and new mothers, funds need to provide better access to information, advice and support to help their members every step of the way.

How technology is helping families to update their superannuation 

One of the ways to better support members and deliver a better experience is to embrace digital transformation. Technology is often unfairly maligned as putting distance between people and providers; haven’t we all suffered from bad website chatbots and automated responses? But it can also help close the gap and make it easier for people to be proactive about their finances.

For example, women taking maternity leave are often required to update their employment status with their super fund provider themselves. This can be a time-consuming and arduous process, firstly finding out who to contact and how to contact them, then completing all the necessary steps to register the change. At a time when families have more pressing concerns – the imminent arrival of a new baby – it can quickly slip from the to-do list, leaving women being charged unnecessary fees or unable to access schemes to keep their superfund growing.

We have recently worked with Employment Hero, a forward-thinking Australian HR & payroll software provider, to give women better access to their super accounts when taking maternity leave. In just 12 weeks, our accelerator supported the creation of “Embedded Super” a simple integration for superannuation funds which allows members to easily manage and update their superannuation account without the hassle of having to contact their provider. It’s a low-cost, low-effort solution which can have a huge and immediate impact on super fund members and their retirement savings. 

Join us at ASFA Conference to find out more

As a trusted superannuation partner, we’re excited to be sharing our work at the ASFA Conference in Sydney on the 19th – 21st November 2024. Taking a cue from this year’s conference theme – Inspiring Excellence – we’ll be demonstrating the embedded super solution and hoping to inspire more providers to embrace this innovation in their system so their members can begin to benefit. 

We’ll also be sharing insights into how we’ve helped: 

• Spirit Super to increase capacity and deliver improved digital services as it rapidly grew in size. Read the case study or watch the video
• Improve digital capabilities so a super fund can quickly respond to new regulations and discover new opportunities to enhance returns for its members. Read the case study

Visit us at the ASFA conference at stand 36 or contact me in advance to find out more.