Client Success Story: Cadent

Cadent boosts member communication and engagement with Standard Life

My name is Jonet Dunmore. I'm Head of Pensions at Cadent.

Tell us about Cadent

Cadent is the largest gas distribution company in the UK serving over 11 million customers. We have 6,500 employees based both in offices and out in the field, and we provide an important part of the country's infrastructure.

How do you and your team help contribute to Cadent’s success?

So, I'm Head of Pensions at Cadent. I've been there for about five and a half years setting up the Cadent pensions team, which is an award-winning pensions team. And together we look after both our defined contribution pension scheme, MyPension, which is part of the Standard Life Master Trust, and also the Cadent Gas Pension Scheme, which is a legacy DB scheme with 24,000 members, most of whom are pensioners.

Tell us about your experience of the Standard Life Master Trust

I feel like being part of Master Trust is the best of both worlds really. We've got the comfort of knowing that there are professional trustees who are really focused on the administration and the investments of the scheme, and we also have a governance committee who can ask questions about that and engage with the trustees on those topics. And we can also then really focus on engaging with our employees and our members and working with Standard Life to do that in the most effective way.

How does Standard Life support you with member engagement?

Trying to get members who are out in the field, not office-based to engage with their pensions can be quite difficult. We found that the Standard Life app is really quite popular with our members and a good way to increase member engagement. There's also some great financial planning tools on there that we've had good feedback on, and for example, the Money Mindset app is really good and helpful for keeping track of your finances. So that's been the feedback from that has been really positive.

How helpful was the survey we completed with your members?

So, the client survey has been really helpful in helping us form our communications strategy for the year and thinking about what messaging we really want to give to members. The survey this year gave us a real key distinction between different parts of the workforce, largely based on age that obviously the older employees are really focusing on their retirement and those that are further away from retirement and more thinking about financial planning. So that's helped us think about targeting different communications to different parts of the workforce and segmenting on that basis.

Have you noticed a positive change in how employees are engaging in their pensions?

We've had a real focus on increasing beneficiary registrations, so that's increased by 38% over the last year because we've really focused on that, and we'll continue to do so. Also, the views on using the app and the dashboard, the microsite that we have, the website, they've both increased this year as well as a result of our communications plan that we agreed with Standard Life.

How has Client Analytics enhanced your employee communication and engagement?

Using the Client Analytics tool has been really helpful in really targeting our communications. We've done things like we've looked at the projected pots for our members based on their contribution rates and compared these to the PLSA living standards and they've come out quite favourably, but that doesn't mean we think that our work is done. We'll continue to target members, encourage to save more for their retirement and to really think about their retirement, which they can do using the retirement planning tools that are included in the app, and that's really quite helpful.

What would you say to other similar companies looking to engage employees with their pensions?

So, I think all companies recognise it can be difficult to engage employees with pensions. It can be very difficult to understand pensions it's quite complicated. I think the key thing is to keep messaging as simple as possible. So, we've really focused on encouraging people to use the mobile app. It's got some really great tools in there. It's quite an intuitive app to use, can really help people plan their own retirement.

What do you value most about your relationship with Standard Life?

I think the thing I value the most about our relationship with Standard Life is that it's collaborative. And we've worked really well together to try and increase member engagement and to help members understand their pensions.