Aegon X RCA

Climate Action through Pensions: Teller

Product Design • Service Design • Strategy • Fintech • Sustainability

Project Overview

Climate change puts our livelihood and future at risk and investing in ESG appropriate funds will yield better results for everyone. Asset investing and funds have been heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and changing a big percentage of those funds towards green and renewable industries could drastically benefit the action towards carbon neutrality.

Outcome

We designed a service product that helps users save their everyday change and invest it in pensions or other regular personal savings accounts like ISAs focusing only on green funds. This product was designed to ease people into habitual saving through a regular contribution of an existing habit. Our feedback was overwhelmingly positive as it was a benefiting product that users could see themselves using.

Year

October 2023 - February 2024

Team

Service Designers / UI / UX & Product / Business Consultants / Graphic
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My Role

Service Designer / User Researcher / Brand Designer / Strategy and Business Viability

My Contribution

Service Designer / User Researcher / Brand Designer / Strategy and Business Viability

A first step into the issue was looking into workplace pensions of employees in the UK, and how that transaction is perceived. The majority of employers make decisions on behalf of the workforce and enrol them in a default fund that yields an average returns at a low risk.
Our purpose as a team was to understand the stakeholders involved, the value exchange, how the system works and how it is perceived by our chosen demographic. What motivates the new generations towards saving and investing in their future and the environment and where lie opportunities to promote change.

There are currently 26.6 billion pounds worth of unclaimed pensions in the UK. Who do they belong to, and how do people go about reclaiming them, and collecting them into one pot and further nudging them to invest in the right places?

Millennials hold 60% of pensions in the UK. Even if a small percentage of this group were to divest and switch to Green Investment options we could save upto 23 million tonnes of Co2, every single year.

A big number of employed individuals choose to opt-out, because trust in the system and cost of living are driving their current financial decisions.

Problem Breakdown

Initially set out to understand and fully immerse myself in the industry interview, speak to and map out the system as thoroughly as possible. We spoke to people between the ages of 25-40 working and self-employed about their understanding of pensions, and how they plan for the future.

We collected insights that directed our narrative that trust of the system is a big contributing factor along with fearing that their future is not guaranteed to be safe. Our research also showed that personality traits like conscientiousness, organisation and self-actualisation were evident in the individuals who were saving and planned for their future.

Research Breakdown

Based on our insights we created multiple narratives and value exchange matrixes to fully illustrate where the majority of decisions, pains and opportunities to a solution lie.
To further understand behaviours that help individuals plan and make decisions we equated to other habitual systems, like beauty and health routines.
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It seemed like our solution was guiding us to try and softly change behaviours by implementing a mindless activity. Round-up introduces saving that happens as an afterthought for the people who don’t want to plan meticulously, or for people who don’t or believe they don’t have enough money to save. If we had them understand that the change from each coffee and transport adds up to a relatively sensible amount.

Our research also delved into how we can apply a level of gamification in order to keep the users engaged. Could that look like a game, can there be badges, can something grow?
Elements we visually researched but received very little feedback on.

Direction

We designed Teller.
A service concept in the form of a platform application, where individuals can enrol in a pension or connect their already enrolled pensions, and make steady small payments into their accounts resulting from the change collected from their everyday purchases. The change from their regular purchases gets collected into a temporary account and then invested in a Green Pension fund or a Green ISA. Our team was able to produce a prototype, conduct user testing, iterate based on feedback and create a go-to-market strategy, along with a feasibility, and viability study.
For further information about this project please get in touch.

Solution

Aegon X RCA

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