I joined Bravura three years ago with a background in pensions administration and systems management. As a Principle Consultant my role means I work with our customers to make their business more streamlined in delivering products and services to their customers. I also keep an eye on development from a regulatory, technology and best practice perspective.  

Another key aspect of my role is leading the LGBT+ inclusivity network within Bravura. This network was set up with the aims of making everybody feel valued, welcome, and able to bring their best-self to work. To support this, we are doing several different initiatives around the business to enhance what we can provide both as a company and as individuals to celebrate our diversity. Within this network we have three core aims:

  1. To improve the visibility of LGBT+ people across the organisation.
  2. To remove general biases and assumptions that people might make.
  3. To introduce better health and wellbeing across the organisation for LGBT+ people whether they are at work or in the home space, irrespective of which company or territory they are in. 

A key part of the initiative is making sure that we can provide a network of people that can help, this includes the opportunity to talk on a confidential or anonymous basis. We also look at how we can use technology to support people who are questioning themselves.  

This workstream, being all about people and how we think, is fascinating. I believe that understanding and solving business problems as well as societal problems ultimately comes down to people.

This brings me on to the Pensions Dashboard of which I have been a quiet champion for some time. I believe one of the biggest problems we face in the UK savings market is that people are often totally disengaged with their finances. Looking at my parents’ generation they were not too concerned about pensions, savings or insurance, nor did they have to understand it. We lived, back then, in a parentalistic society, where often our company would manage these matters for us. Now however it is a different story. Consequently, we cannot learn from our parents as to how to deal with pensions and how to manage our own finances. Some of my close friends who are brilliant in their own fields, lose all their confidence when it comes to talking about pensions, savings and investments as they simply do not understand them.

I believe there is a huge opportunity for Pensions Dashboards to bring to life the idea of financial planning and to reconnect people with money they have lost or forgotten about. People may have changed jobs many times in their career, and they might have multiple small pots of money with many different providers. Not only will this service reconnect them with their sporadic retirement savings, it will also help to bring these to life. How much is enough and how much is too little? These calculations will support people in connecting with the reality of their long-term savings goal. I am hopeful that the Dashboard project will help us as an industry and society to make better connections with pensions.

More on Pensions Dashboard from Jonathan next week…

About the author

Jonathan Hawkins

Jonathan Hawkins

Propositions Lead

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