Amid our busy lives, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the thought of managing our day-to-day finances, let alone our longer term financial security. It can be intimidating, and many people’s response is to ignore it completely or do the bare minimum.
When AMP decided to transform how it offered financial advice, the irony of the ‘it’s too hard so I’ll do nothing’ position many people take was at the heart of one of the biggest questions we had to answer:
How can we make it easier?
Easier for customers to manage and engage with their finances better, and easier for the people helping them – our advisers.
The end result of a lengthy exploration of the thoughts, opinions and experiences of our customers and advisers is AMP’s flagship goals-based advice experience, AMP Goals 360.
It’s an experience that focuses more on mapping a customer’s goals and ambitions for the future and less on the spreadsheets and budgets – though they’re still there, working hard in the background.
A key feature of the experience is something we call the Advice Explorer; a large digital timeline that very clearly shows the domino effect one goal can have on another. It’s deliberately visual to help people easily spot financial trade-offs and find ways to prioritise what’s important to them.
Yes, you can have that once in a lifetime round-the-world holiday, but it will mean paying off your mortgage in 15 years instead of 10. How do you feel about that?
The beauty of closely designing an experience with the people who’ll be using it – in our case, customers and advisers – is that it’s easier to avoid the rabbit holes of impractical ideas. We very quickly learnt some valuable home truths that dictated our design process:
- Keep it clear and simple, don’t confuse customers with jargon or mountains of information.
- The relationship customers have with their adviser is important; create something that gives their conversations more substance, not replace it.
- Create an experience customers can revisit with their adviser, not a one-off.
Underpinning these service and user experience requirements, which are critical to the success of AMP Goals 360 and the Advice Explorer, was the need for a viable design that AMP could realistically deliver; two often competing objectives.
"The beauty of closely designing an experience with the people who’ll be using it ... is that it’s easier to avoid the rabbit holes of impractical ideas."
AMP Goals 360 was launched in 2016 with 11 pilot practices which has since expanded to 32, with plans underway to make the experience available to our entire advice network. It seems design and business objectives can have a happy marriage after all.
The design of AMP Goals 360, including the Advice Explorer, recently received three awards at the 60th anniversary of the Good Design Awards®, including the prestigious Best in Class for Design Strategy. Our winning entries will be showcased at the Good Design Showcase, as part of the annual VIVID Festival, at the Sydney Overseas Passenger Terminal last weekend (May 25-27). AMP Goals 360 was also recognised with a first place award in the innovation category at the recent Chant West Super Fund Awards.
Paul Sainsbury is AMP Group Executive - Wealth Solutions and Customer and Chief Customer Officer.
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