Could New App Help Solve Pension Shortfall?

Over the last few years, faced with plummeting savings levels and an ever-increasing gap between pension 'haves' and 'have-nots', the UK pensions scene has seen unprecedented changes. In 2011, for example, the government launched NEST (the National Employment Savings Trust), which was set up to manage the contributions of the millions of UK workers brought into pension savings through auto-enrolment to ensure they get the best possible outcomes.

As part of this work, NEST established an Insight unit which, by working with some of the world’s leading academics, hopes to help solve the challenges facing the 'DC generation' (people whose supplementary retirement income depends on defined contribution savings).

Recently – taking their tip from the technology sector which has led the way in user-centred design – NEST and their technology partner TCS ran an appathon which was partly funded by IKD through the work of IKD member Rajiv Prabhakar. The event gave teams of digital designers and developers just 36 hours to design a prototype app that best encouraged people to put aside more money for the long term, and Dr Prabhakar was invited to take part in the briefing event to provide information to the teams on the aims for the app.

The winner, SaveApp, motivated users by making goals such as 'holiday' or 'car' appear as living creatures which, just like Pokémons or Tamagotchis, get sick if the user isn’t saving enough, or bigger and happier if they save regularly. A pension life-goal is added by default.

Part of the appathon's aim was to pump-prime a joint OU–NEST research bid to the ESRC on automatic enrolment in workplace pensions, and NEST is now working with Dr Prabhakar to develop field trials that will take the best concepts forward for testing with real-life savers. Dr Prabhakar commented:

We were all delighted with the event's success, and I'm now due to have a meeting with NEST in early September on how we can best use the appathon and its results to feed into our larger research bid.

You can read more about the appathon in NEST’s blog.