Equifax Investor Insights provides actual consumer investment purchase behaviour helping tackle the challenges facing pensions and investment providers and advisers

With savers now given the freedom to take their entire pension in cash at retirement, Paul Birks, Decisions Solutions Director at consumer insights expert, Equifax, believes this place a whole new level of emphasis on the need for customer insight for pensions and investments businesses. “If, as many predict, this year will prove to be a pensions and investments game changer, then the organisations that make the best decisions now will be the ones that thrive.

“We believe actual consumer investment purchase behaviour at postcode level is the only way to achieve a complete understanding of customers, which the new Equifax Investor Insights solution delivers.

“The Chancellor’s aim that nobody will be forced to buy an annuity at retirement and can instead take their entire pension in cash, gives a clear signal to wealth and investment providers and advisers that they need to better understand their customers. Full and current customer insight must therefore be central to their activities and this requires a depth of understanding that cannot be achieved through the traditional approach of using survey data.”

Based on more than £345 billion of actual sales of life, pension and investment products, Equifax Investor Insights enables companies to build a clear picture of customers. Applied retrospectively to existing customer data, it could play a particularly valuable role in the changing pensions and investment landscape.

Featuring more than 200 investment characteristics, Equifax Investor Insights provides the value and frequency of investment product purchases, including age, risk and products held, giving providers a better understanding of their customers. A directory of Equifax Investor Insights characteristics at seven digit postcode level can be provided to organisations with analytic and modelling capabilities, enabling them to create bespoke solutions.  Alternatively Equifax can analyse customer data, using Equifax Investor Insights.