What is the Innovation Lab?

The Innovation Lab is a dedicated space within Standard Life House, Edinburgh for identifying member challenges, to showcase existing and new propositional developments, and collaborate with clients, advisers, Employee Benefit Consultants (EBCs), pension trustees and other key stakeholders in an immersive way.

The Lab is used to showcase all the exciting things we're working on, with a specialist team on site who run interactive sessions for visitors. It gives an opportunity for guests to immerse themselves in the latest aspects of our digital experience - including member journeys and features of the Standard Life app, as well as investment strategies, our vulnerable customer programme and wider customer service support.

 

Hackathon

A two-day hackathon took place in the Innovation Lab with 30 ‘hackers’ and 18 internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) participating.

The hackathon challenge was to use agile processes and a design thinking toolkit to deliver new ideas, big or small, that would make it easier for customers to find out more about their pension, understand the benefits and take action.

Across the five cross-functional teams, 100 ideas were generated, with five prototypes pitched to a judging panel at the end of the two days. All 5 ideas were taken forward, with the winning idea going live to customers inside two weeks of the hackathon.

Using immersive experiences to connect with customers

To reiterate our partnership with Samaritans, an Augmented Reality (AR) campaign has been created to highlight the importance of active listening.

You can watch our video.

The Innovation Lab is also home to a fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience, utilised to bring member calls and our award-winning Vulnerable Customer Programme to life. This VR capability complements an existing suite of technology aimed at highlighting issues of vulnerability, including gloves simulating the experience of arthritis and glasses showing various visual impairments.

 

 

Sangita Chawla

Chief Marketing Officer for Standard Life, part of Pheonix Group

We’re delighted that Standard Life has been independently rated as number 1 in our market by NMG consulting for how we bring the customer experience to life. The Innovation Lab plays a huge role in creating this market-leading experience through the immersive technology, collaborative space and ability to showcase customer journey demos.

 

The Innovation Forum

In 2022, we launched our first-ever Innovation Forum in collaboration with FinTech Scotlandand TCS COIN(Co-Innovation Network). The Forum was created to explore innovative solutions for industry challenges. It invites entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas on using technology to address wider societal challenges around financial well-being.

The first two areas addressed were improving digital literacy and financial inclusion. The winner was Behavioural Financeand our first pilot was launched at the end of 2023 to a pool of customers.

Our first Innovation Forum challenge of 2023 was in March, which targeted new Workplace scheme members, with new or existing clients. It was aimed at customers with little or no knowledge of investing and/or sustainability. The challenge was: “How can we help our pension customers understand and engage with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing?”

The Forum had two joint winners: InvestSuite& The Joy Club
We are progressing with both winners and are planning phased rollouts in 2024 with a pool of Standard Life Workplace clients and their members.

In August 2023, we launched our second Innovation Forum of the year, focusing on engaging women for better financial futures. Specifically, the challenge looked at: “How can we innovate to more effectively engage women in their financial future and improve women’s retirement outcomes?”

Find out more about the challenge.

 

Gail Izat

Standard Life Workplace

The Innovation Lab continues to tell Standard Life’s story in a compelling way. It enables us to showcase how we engage Workplace members to provide support and information that has meaning and relevance at financial moments that matter in life. The immersive experiences set the tone for how we communicate with Workplace members and showing our ongoing support through our partnership with Samaritans.

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