Evolutionary Awards – GTC

Category: Evolution in improving member outcomes

Describe your evolution:

The legacy of the segregation of retirement funds from private investments
Separating retirement funds from private investments has been an industry legacy (and shortcoming) for many years. Rooted in operating system constraints within the life companies of yester-year, (for those of you old enough to remember) the terminology of ‘employee benefits’ and ‘life’ has prevailed since then. ‘Life’ was a reference back then (evolving to private client in more recent times) to any personal investment that was almost exclusively based on a life insurance product before the 1990’s. This separation of retirement fund participation from personal investments has prevailed.

Regulatory changes (a good thing)
2018 saw this segregation somewhat dismantled. Regulatory changes to Section 36 of the Pension Funds Act required retirement fund administrators to create default portfolios and annuities. It also required that a member could have the prerogative to remain a paid-up member of a retirement fund after leaving the service of that employer. Most significantly perhaps (and the beginning of the compulsory engagement with a fund member on a holistic basis) there was an obligation on retirement fund trustee boards to ensure that members were ‘counselled’ as regards their options on joining, leaving, and retirement.

The advent of Altertude
Long before these compulsory government-initiated interventions, GTC, South Africa’s 6th largest commercial umbrella fund, combined its retirement fund and private client business processes onto a single fintech platform which ensured that a retirement fund member was treated the same as a private investor, and that their retirement fund assets and insured benefits were consolidated with the portfolio that they were running as a private individual.
Under the proprietary fintech architecture of Altertude, GTC created an automated, exponential member engagement portal. Capable of engaging with large numbers of individuals at any one time (payroll memberships of up to 100 000 members being concurrently possible), GTC created a toolkit that combined multiple sources of engagement and information distribution into a detailed ‘Pre-Advice Life Report’, combining some 14 personalised financial metrics into a single consolidated statement of account.

How GTC’s fintech platform works for a retirement fund member
A retirement fund member engaging with the Altertude platform has immediate access to a rich source of technical and product information in various languages and in different formats. They also have immediate access to counsellors and advisors. This portal which combines multiple levels of engagement with straight-through processing of application forms and compliance documents, sees a seamless, simple, and quick transactional and information process.

Altertude enables payroll data being automated into the financial advice engine (TrueNorth) creating a zero-click advice report and live access to TrueNorth’s financial summary and scenario planning. This initial engagement represents the start of a member’s financial wellness journey, progressing, if required, to advisor engagement, recommendations, and records of advice, culminating with an auto fulfilment process of application submission and product activation.

This automated engagement, either including advisory processes or not (i.e. a deferred exit does not require the giving of advice) sees GTC enabling business transactions concurrently with a large number of users, the demographics of which would not otherwise permit commercially viable engagement. As well as being good for business, Altertude is philanthropic, empowering and enabling all retirement fund members to construct non-biased sustainable solutions for their personalised financial wellbeing.

Why Altertude is, and will continue to be good for business
While Two-pot may well have highlighted Altertude’s capability and transacting power, long after the Two-pot tsunami, retirement fund members will still require (ever-increasing) levels of detailed reporting. Not only the detail, but the frequency of these communications will increase. Some engagements are legislated, many more are just good business practices. In addition to being a powerful enabler, GTC’s fintech platform provides a detailed transactional history of communications sent, videos watched, discussions recorded, and many other workflows that remain on record for so long as they might be required. Altertude provides GTC clients with the peace of mind of a fully auditable, verifiable member engagement that is both philanthropic and commercially enabling.

GTC’s evolutionary product provides the most cost-effective, scalable, and detailed member engagement capability available in South Africa at this time.

Describe the impact your evolution has had in response to its identified challenges and targeted outcomes.

Some stats to show the effectiveness of member engagement (on a large scale)
Paying testament to the capabilities of this evolutionary business process, GTC’s statistical summary of Two-pot engagement speaks for itself.

98% of all GTC retirement fund members received verifiable engagement prior to the 1 September Two-pot implementation date. By 15 September, 99% of all eligible members had received detailed (and verified) Impact Reports detailing their personalised scenario planning and the actual rand consequences.

24% of affected members chose to engage further through either a counselling or advisory one-on-one consultation. Two-thirds of these engagements took place before 1 September. Utilising Altertude, GTC ensured that by the start of Two-pot, 92% of eligible member claim submissions were pre-loaded, and by 15 September 84% of all claims were paid.

Based on a customer survey conducted by all affected members, a Net Promoter Score (NPS) ranked GTC’s Two-pot delivery at 97%. This extraordinarily high score is a testament to the technology and scalability of Altertude.

Supporting Documentation >