In QSuper’s bid to create mass personalisation of retirement outcomes it has created 36 different types of communication for members.

Speaking at the Post Retirement Conference in Sydney, Michael Pennisi, chief strategy officer at QSuper, revealed how an attitudinal survey, along with age and gender had helped create the profiles.

“With each of those profiles we know what the key touch points are and the messages they want to hear. We are trying to bring that out increasingly across every communication channel we have.”

Pennisi said the fund was registering improved levels of engagement as a result of this communication.

While in a measure of the fund’s commitment to personalised outcomes, QSuper is to write to members in the accumulation phase telling them they will be placed in one of eight different investment cohorts. These are based on age, account balance, economic conditions and Centrelink entitlements. In the future, these cohorts will also consider variables such as job, gender and age.

Pennisi said the success of each cohort in taking members towards retirement adequacy would be checked and measured each year. The fund is initially using the measure of retirement adequacy as published by the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia combined with replacement rate calculations.

Pennisi added that advice was a key part of the path towards more tailored retirement incomes and that its initial goal was to ensure members understood all the options open to them. To help provide a greater choice for members, QSuper will launch a direct investment option for members later this year, from one of the leading member platform providers.

Advice and education for members is being provided by telephone, face to face and through an interactive web service.