Standard Life: A Fresh Approach to Tax Planning
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Standard Life: A Fresh Approach to Tax Planning How Standard Life provided advisers with a unique way to demonstrate the value of their advice to their clients in the face of regulatory change Category: 1.6 Integrated Campaign Author: Pauline Graham, Head of Planning, RAPP Edinburgh Campaign Management: Gillian McLaughlin, Head of Customer Proposition Messaging, Standard Life Jenny Terris, Senior Account Manager, RAPP Edinburgh Bobby Richardson, Account Executive, RAPP Edinburgh Confidential Restricted – Not to be disclosed beyond authorised roles within Standard Life group or authorised third parties 1
Executive summary
With challenging business targets to meet in a changing regulatory
landscape, Standard Life provided its advisers with a unique way to
demonstrate the value of their advice to their clients, and through
their technical expertise supported advisers with innovative, flexible
tax year end (TYE) planning tools.
The fresh, distinctive, multi-faceted campaign approach resulted
in market-leading online interaction levels, hugely positive adviser
feedback and most importantly smashing business targets,
delivering a return on investment of 1,778%.
2
Success breeds high A changing external
expectations landscape
Standard Life relies on continuing customer In the lead up to and during the campaign
investment to maintain their market leading period of early 2012, the market was
position. A significant proportion of their experiencing a lot of flux in face of the emerging
business is written by advisers and much changing regulatory landscape.
of that is leading up to the tax year end (5 April).
The adviser industry was jumping through
So this is where Standard Life focuses most of
hoops to meet new FSA requirements.
their annual retail marketing budget.
Because of changing regulations from the
In 2011, Standard Life’s adviser-facing tax planned introduction of The Retail Distribution
year end communications campaign developed Review (RDR) in the autumn of 2012, advisers
by RAPP was an unprecedented success. were required to demonstrate transparency
Although they had spent a fraction of that in charging.
invested by competitors they had still far
At the same time, the media was starting to
exceeded targets.
write about the new regulatory changes, and
The confidence this generated within many consumers were unsure what this would
Standard Life combined with the bite of a mean for them.
sluggish economy resulted in a double whammy
for 2012. Budgets were cut but the pressure
to make targets increased. In late 2011,
Standard Life’s marketing team were given
their 2012 targets. 10% up on the previous
year. With half the budget.
Game on.
3
A strategy based Additionally, the results from 2011 showed
that certain key advisers hadn’t supported
on informed opinion the campaign:
• T
ransactors – traditionally focused on
With so much change in the market, our strategy
TYE – due to limited awareness of new
had to be borne out of learnings from the previous
Standard Life investment product options
year’s campaign and drawn from insights from
current adviser research. • H
olistic advisers – all year round tax planners
– don’t respond to tax year end campaigns
Research suggested a market opportunity. Over
two thirds of mid to high net worth investors
intended to set up new investments that year1. In 2012, Standard Life had three key challenges:
However, those taking advice was in decline and • P
ersuading ‘holistics’ that our product offering
more than 1 in 4 were making decisions alone1. was a year-round service
Our advisers needed to be best placed to harness
this potential new business. However, many • E
ducating ‘transactors’ about our investment
advisers were devoting their time to ensuring new product portfolio
FSA requirements that needed to be in place due • C
rucially, we had to highlight the relevance of
to RDR, and an impact arising from this was that Standard Life’s portfolio to all advisers
less time was being spent on new business.
Research also gave us valuable insight into how
Standard Life was perceived by advisers, and how
the current environment was shaping their attitudes
to tax planning advice.
Standard Life is known as being a market leader
with strong products and leading technology
solutions. Research demonstrates that advisers
perceive them as being extremely capable but
lacking a human face2.
Advisers felt that tax planning advice was more
important than ever in a changing regulatory and
financial environment. More than half of UK-based
financial advisers believe the current financial
climate (65%) has made tax planning more
important for their clients. This is followed
by changes in tax legislation (54%) with the
changes made to pension contribution limits
coming third (42%)3.
“There is a lot of talk about investment risk but very little
about tax risk. The complexity of tax and the speed with
which legislation can change means it’s becoming more and
more difficult for the consumer to understand the impact it
can have on their savings and investments. And this is where
financial advisers can add real value to their clients.”
Julie Hutchison, Head of International Technical Insight at Standard Life
1
NMG Investor Census, November 2011
2
“Taking the IFA Temperature”, The Platforum, October 2011
3
YouGov research with sample of 213 IFAs, January 2012
4
The fresh approach to Multi-faceted
tax planning model campaign
To help address market changes and With challenging targets, we did two things.
provide an enhanced tax planning offering We started the campaign sooner than the
post-RDR, Standard Life created a powerful previous year: a series of events targeting
tax planning model. advisers ran in January with supporting media
launching in February.
Putting the customer at its heart – the model
is flexible enough to offer options whatever the We lacked the budget for an extensive
customers need – and illustrates an individual’s print campaign. Being largely reliant on
financial journey with a shared focus on online media in trade publications and up
‘accumulation’ (i.e. putting money in when we against a highly competitive spend period
are earning), ‘decumulation’ (i.e. taking money bombarding the airwaves with tax planning
out when we are in retirement) and ‘financial’ messages, our creative needed a clear call to
wealth transfer (i.e. passing money on). action and stand out.
By considering holistic retirement needs,
Financial providers too often use advertising to
the model recognises that a smart investor
trumpet about their strengths. But the previous
won’t focus solely on their pension but will
year, we had looked at the value Standard Life
maximise tax efficient options too.
brings to the advisers’ business and this was
Standard Life’s approach was to provide welcomed. Building on this platform, our 2012
advisers with a method to clearly demonstrate campaign championed the value an adviser
the value their advice gives to clients in the long could bring to a client’s portfolio, effectively
term. This was particularly important to advisers making a business case for financial advice.
in the run up to and beyond the implementation
The creative was based on a typographical
of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR).
route using the staple proposition ‘Because’
The innovative new tax planning model incorporating truths that reinforced the
is considered to be unique in the adviser importance of bespoke advice and flexibility in
marketplace and is in stark contrast to the relation to tax planning. It was a bold and honest
traditional accumulation planning approach taken acknowledgement that times have changed and
by Standard Life’s competitors. It gave Standard there was a need for a new response.
Life something genuinely different to talk about
We decided visually to use a biro pen
and became the campaign linchpin.
style animation which brought to life a truth
about how advisers engage with their clients.
The campaign objectives for 2012 was: A lot of business is conducted face-to-face and
advisers often have to explain complex issues
• T
o bring Standard Life’s fresh by jotting down notes and scribbling out
approach to tax planning to the diagrams to explain the client’s personal
intermediary adviser market situation. It brings a human element into the
campaign that feels natural.
• S
upporting them through the current
key legislative changes
This meant that, despite budget cuts, it was not
an option to simply redress the 2011 campaign.
This new approach needed a fresh, distinctive,
multi-faceted creative.
5
Three creative executions were delivered to highlight reasons why clients needed adviser’s guidance
and how Standard Life was uniquely placed to support them.
Key call to action was its Tax Planning Hub on adviserzone.com, which provides advisers with a
source of technical support and practical solutions on tax changes.
Display banners
6
Given research feedback that Standard Life could lack a human face, it was important that our
campaign allowed for interaction and bespoke information that the adviser could act upon. A series
of roadshow adviser events were planned to help address this, showcasing Standard Life’s pensions
expert, John Lawson. This was supported with collateral explaining the new three dimensional tax
planning model.
Internal posters
A key integrated aspect to the campaign was the event and enquiry follow up, where each
adviser was sent a tailored list of their clients with details of which ones had made full or partial
use of their pension, ISA and bond allowance. This equipped them with the right information to
correctly advise their clients whilst saving them valuable time they could then devote to relationship
building with their client – a clear demonstration of the partnership approach Standard Life
was taking with advisers.
Follow-up pack
7
Strong results • O
ver 800 advisers attended our events with an
extra 300 attending locally organised events.
We have since followed up with 630 of the
With vastly reduced budgets, we were not able
attendees. 82% of them found the events
to commission campaign evaluation research.
really valuable
But we ensured we had some very tangible
metrics in place: • 4
74 meetings were held with advisers
specifically about the campaign
• Attendance at launch events
• 3
,220 pieces of supporting campaign
• Post event evaluation feedback
collateral were ordered from stock or
• Take up of adviser information packs downloaded from Standard Life’s adviserzone
• Traffic to website / twitter account website in response to campaign activity
• C
lick-through rates to adviserzone.com • O
ver 12,000 unique clicks on our
from / interaction with online advertising Tax Planning Hub
• Open rates for the campaign emails • An email open rate of 17%: exactly on target
• Revenue targets • M
arket leading click through rates on our
online advertising campaign. Our first creative
delivered 0.25%, our second 0.15% and our
With half the budget of the previous third 0.21% (all exceeding target). 0.08% is
year, we smashed our targets. the lower end of industry average and 0.25%
the upper end
• O
ver 50,433 User Initiated Interactions with
the online display advertising with a high
number watching the attached video in full
• S
ocial listening showed that feedback from
roadshow event attendees was positive
(see sample tweets below)
• D
oubled the number of followers of our
Twitter account, @sl_adviser (500 to 1,000)
As Standard Life was not running any other adviser-facing activity during that time, we can be
confident that these results were delivered by this campaign.
8
The value to the
business
Most importantly, we’ve seen an uplift in
business from advisers contacted as part
of the campaign delivering a return on
investment of 1,778%.
The tailored client information was hugely
effective. In 2011, 8% of the assets written
during the campaign came from existing clients.
This year, that figure leapt to 18% (reaching 24%
with the SIPP and 25% with the Wrap ISA).
It is impossible to isolate the precise income
generated by this campaign from ongoing
business. But we do know that this campaign
made a substantial contribution to a 26%
increase in assets under management by the
Retail arm of the business.
The campaign also gained traction with an
internal audience. Over 1,500 employees viewed
the campaign page on Standard Life’s internal
website and 33% of those visitors watched the
4 minute campaign video in full.
“Standard Life has had a resilient start to 2012 despite
the uncertain economic environment and fragile consumer
confidence which has affected new business volumes in the
first quarter against a strong start to last year. Against this
backdrop our performance has been good”
David Nish, Chief Executive, Standard Life, April 2012
9
You can also read
