As a mutual organisation, OneFamily’s goal is to provide modern families with relevant, affordable products to help them thrive financially. Owned by its members for its members, OneFamily has around 1.6 million customers and £5.5 billion in assets under management.
OneFamily offers Lifetime ISAs, Junior ISAs, Child Trust Funds, bonds, lifetime mortgages and over 50 life insurance, as well as Beagle Street branded life insurance and critical illness insurance.
The company has undergone a major technological transformation in recent years, aimed at giving customers more control, access and autonomy over their finances.
Leading OneFamily’s technology and IT change projects is Steve Ferrari, the organization’s Chief Transformation Officer. Since joining OneFamily in 2013, Steve has developed and executed strategies to improve the experience for customers, partners and colleagues. Much of his work is focused on the use of technology to drive efficiencies within the business, particularly with AI and future Generation AI.
Steve said: “It’s a great time to be working in technology in the financial services industry, with developments in the sector constantly evolving. My goal is to develop and execute a strategy that enables OneFamily to utilise these new technologies in a way that benefits our customers and makes their lives as easy as possible. For example, we’re using speech analytics to review calls we receive to better understand where in our conversations they might need a little more support.
“We’ve always recorded our calls, but by converting them to text we can look for trends, dive deeper into what’s actually going on and identify areas for improvement. This not only improves the phone conversation experience, but also allows us to update our web pages with the information our customers are looking for – something we can’t do with thousands of hours of voice recordings, but which speech analytics can.”
OneFamily is the largest child trust fund provider in the UK, controlling over 25% of the market. As funds mature when account holders turn 18, the organisation was faced with the challenge of making this process as accessible as possible for thousands of young people. To support these customers, the company has embraced digital technology, using a biometric app to guide them through the identification and verification process.
Steve said: “We realised that this generation is more comfortable submitting documents and verifying their identity using their mobile phone rather than submitting certified copies of everything through the traditional tedious process. The app we use is secure, convenient and puts the customer before process.”
Similarly, younger customers love OneFamily’s chatbot functionality because it’s fast, efficient and gives them the information they need instantly. It also helps the organization understand trends in customer requests so it can learn from them and continuously improve how it communicates.
Steve said: “As we start to explore the capabilities of generative AI, we believe that over time our chatbots may be able to provide an even richer experience for customers.
“We also use AI in our knowledge management system, a tool our teams use to find what they need from processes and procedural guides. Being able to quickly find the information they need means we can serve our customers better. It also helps us find knowledge gaps so we can better train our colleagues.”
The recent explosion of AI is impacting many aspects of work and life, with a recent ONS report showing that 32% of adults feel that AI will benefit them. However, the use of AI and Generation AI is not without challenges. Many are concerned about the rise of this type of technology, with 28% of adults believing that AI poses more risks than benefits, and 36% not believing that AI will have a positive impact on their lives.
“AI will bring about a massive change in the way businesses operate, there’s no doubt about that,” says Steve. “Big change naturally creates some anxiety, but it also creates incredible opportunities for those who truly embrace the future.”
“Of course, as a responsible organization, we take a cautious approach. We want any AI we use to be safe, proven technology, and we always ensure there are appropriate checks and balances in place. It’s a smart business practice.”
OneFamily believes that by embracing the positive potential of AI and using it in innovative ways, it can benefit its members and support its business as it grows.
OneFamily and iPipeline Partner to Drive Growth
To further support its growth plans, OneFamily has partnered with software development company iPipeline to launch a new digital platform that will enable it to migrate customer policies from multiple platforms onto a single self-service platform.
Steve said: “Ensuring that customers are satisfied with our service is our number one priority and this new digital platform makes it even easier for them to access and manage their finances. The move to iPipeline’s SSG (Self-Service Generation) platform is our largest recent technology development, and last year we completed our first large-scale migration of 1.2 million policies in one weekend. We want to ensure that our customers always have a positive experience when they interact with OneFamily and this new technology is a key part of that.”
“Modernizing our internal systems has also improved the efficiency of OneFamily’s award-winning customer service team, empowering our employees to deliver even better service to our customers – the core of what we do.”
Looking to the future, Steve’s priority is continuing to drive SSG’s success. Steve said: “Our goal over the next 12 months is to continue the migration efforts working with iPipeline to move the remaining smaller transactions onto the new system in the next phase of the replatforming.”
“We are also focused on enhancing our data, marketing and sales capabilities with technologies such as Microsoft Dynamics for CRM (customer relationship management) and Microsoft Azure Data Factory for large-scale data ingestion, preparation and transformation.”
These technologies are a key part of OneFamily’s growth plans, enabling the company to continue delivering high-quality services to its customers.
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