Canada Life

Canada Life began operations in the United Kingdom in 1903.

Canada Life Investments is the asset management division of the UK business, providing investing solutions in equities, fixed income and property. It also offers a range of open-ended funds (OEICs) that cover UK and international equities and bonds, as well as multi-asset solutions.

The Challenge

The April 2015 Budget saw the most radical changes to private pensions for a generation, with the introduction of pension freedoms, giving individuals the right at age 55 to draw income directly from their pension pot without the need to annuitise.

Canada Life had historically been a major player in the annuity market but as pension freedoms blew a hole in this market, it turned its ambition to becoming a key provider in the pension draw-down product space.

Our approach

We embarked on what has been a three year program of research, involving over 250 hours of IFA conversations to support Canada Life in the development, positioning and communication of a new draw-down product that aims to deliver real pension freedoms – offering the full range of inflows and outflows and a whole suite of investment options.

Five tranches of research have been conducted to date…

• Initial ideation research based on qualitative in-depth interviews with IFAs to discover unmet needs across pension inflows/outflows, investment options and supporting platform tools
• Two stage qualitative and quantitative research among IFAs to test the initial draw-down proposition concept
• Qualitative research based on in-depth interviews with IFAs to look specifically at the investment proposition
• Qualitative research among IFAs to test launch proposition themes, together with proposed copies and messages
• Qualitative research among target consumer market to test product literature and consumer understanding of the key product features

The outcome

The voice of the IFA has led to the development of the Canada Life Retirement Account proposition by taking into account the needs of IFAs’ target clients.

The process has been truly iterative with each stage of research informing the product and platform build and the launch communications.

The findings from the research that Savanta has delivered at every stage have been invaluable and we have truly benefited from them being on the NPD journey with us.

Head of Insight, Canada Life