It’s vitally important that you receive clear, relevant and prompt information from us, throughout the life of your plan. This includes everything from the literature you read when you’re considering buying a product, to how we keep you informed on how your plan is doing, to the way we communicate with you when it matures.
How are we doing?
- In the Customer Impact industry survey, respondents rated clarity as the single most important factor in written
communications.
Thinking about the statements and personalised letters you might have received from AEGON Scottish Equitable over the past 12 months, how would you rate them?
Source: ORC International, 19 February 2007
- We recently launched an online information management service, Mi Data. Advisers can use this to monitor various aspects of a group pension scheme and use the information to better advise corporate customers.
- Many of our customers have had plans with us for 10, 20 or even 30 years. Since then, technology has developed at enormous speed. It wouldn’t make sense to move all existing plans onto a new system every time we add a new facility to new policies, but this can sometimes result in letters about older contracts looking particularly dated. This is a problem for the industry in general, and it needs to be tackled.
- In August 2006, we refreshed the AEGON Scottish Equitable brand. As part of this, we agreed on an improved, more helpful layout look and a clearer style of language that we’ll use in future written communications. Changing all of our documents will take time and we’ll update you on our progress with this next year.
What we’ll do differently in 2007
- We’re making a major investment in a new technology platform that will allow us to review and improve the letters and other documents that customers receive, including those with older plans. It will take several years to review them all, but we’re committed to making a real difference here and will keep you updated in future reports.
- We’ll keep steadily reviewing all of our documents to bring them into line with our new creative look and clear language style.
- To improve the one-off letters we send, we’re looking at the training we can give to the people who write them.
- We’ll continue to work with the regulators to suggest changes to the rules we need to follow in documents such as yearly statements and find ways to make these items more customer-friendly.
