Scottish Widows is investing £100m in supercharging its digital engagement to help more people connect with their pensions and close the protection gap.
According to the research, 38% of people are not on track for a minimum lifestyle in retirement and Scottish Widows is trying to show people how they can grow their pot and encourage more people to take the right action when it counts the most.
As part of the digital engagement drive, the insurer and pensions company has revamped its app and introduced a new gamification feature, digital tools and open finance functionality.
It also launched an OOH brand activation at waterloo station, – the Pension Mirror, an AI-generated installation that guessed the user’s age and calculated the average pension amount the person should have, engaging passers by to get talking about pensions.
Alongside its OOH and digital engagement Scottish Widows has launched a TikTok channel to coincide with ‘Pension Engagement Season’. The channel aims to reach the one in four people in their 20s (SW data) who are not currently saving anything for retirement.
Chira Barua, CEO of Scottish Widows said: “One in four people in their 20s don’t have a pension and 38% of adults are not on track for a minimum lifestyle in retirement, so we need to revolutionise the way people interact with longer-term savings to close that gap.
“Since we started building the app and digital tools, we’ve had phenomenal uplift in engagement and see this as a gamechanger in helping people take the right steps now to get the retirement they want.”
As part of the move Scottish Widows is also dropping its iconic black-cloaked widow model, who has appeared in the brand’s advertising since 1986.
Despite being a feature of Scottish Widow adverts for decades, the firm said it was phasing out the model in order to create a more modern digital look, and has since launched a new ‘digital widow motif’ across its app and platforms, to bring it into a new era.