ZEDRA has forged a strategic collaboration with Heka Global, a web intelligence provider, for a groundbreaking AI tracing service aimed at reconnecting pension scheme members with ‘lost’ retirement savings.
Building on the success of a pilot, which successfully traced 50% of applicable members previously unreachable by commercial tracing services, this project will enable the integration of Heka’s technology for ZEDRA’s clients via a dedicated technical architecture.
It will help smaller schemes access economies of scale typically unavailable to them, while enabling larger schemes to operate more swiftly and efficiently than with traditional solutions.
Mark Stopard (pictured), head of proposition development at ZEDRA Governance, said: “With more than £31 billion in unclaimed entitlements, and more than three million inactive or lost pension pots, re-uniting pension members with their full retirement benefits is one of the biggest challenges facing the pension industry today.
“Making sure all members receive their benefits is a core fiduciary duty, as is controlling the financial costs of missing member data. Further to that, tracing these individuals will allow schemes to significantly boost their ability to re-engage members. ZEDRA is committed to finding innovative and effective solutions to help our pension scheme clients tackle the issue of missing members and lost pensions, and we’re excited to see the results of this initiative.”
Heka business development manager, Max Lack, added: “Numbers around unclaimed pensions continue to surge, driven by many factors including rising professional and geographic mobility. Changes in members’ communication preferences have also exacerbated the trustees’ challenge of restoring contact as traditional postage is being overtaken by numerous digital channels.
“Many of the toughest challenges in the pensions sector – de-risking data exercises, dashboard readiness, retirement adequacy – stem from missing member data. Get this solved and things start to become easier. Emergent AI tools offer a powerful solution to addressing these data gaps, and our recent pilot clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach. We look forward to working together to bring the same benefits to further pension scheme clients.”
