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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 1

Trudy's story

Ronald Heijn, Harold Clijsen and Monique Schut in conversation with Adriaan Vermeulen about the transformation of PGB Pension Services getting ready for the new pension world.

In four parts, I would like to take you through the extraordinary change journey of the past 3 years, which PGB Pension Services has gone through together with Noviter to become more customer-oriented and agile. Today part 1:

It is quarter past nine on Monday morning when Trudy (77) stands at the checkout in the supermarket and pulls her bank card through the scanner for the 3rd time to pay for her groceries. "Sorry ma'am, it's not working again, the bank balance is too low," says the cashier kindly, while quickly casting a concerned glance at the growing line at the checkout. "Oh, no way," Trudy replies in a strained voice, "it's the 1st of the month, isn't it? My retirement fund always transfers it then!" Trudy senses the impatience of the people in line behind her and with shame begins to put away the chocolate, bread and bananas. "Take this off then, it should fit," Trudy whispers. With a half-empty bag, she leaves the supermarket and begins her walking route back home, full of doubt about what she may have done wrong and how she is going to pay the remaining bills when her well-deserved retirement benefits have not yet arrived.

Uncomfortably silent

It is September 2021, and it is uncomfortably quiet in the group of 12 quartermasters from PGB retirement services as we process this story. One of the participants has just recounted from personal experience what she recently experienced in her neighborhood supermarket. She was fortunately not a pension recipient of PGB Pension Fund, but she could have been. The team has just completed 2 intensive "customer experience" learning days and is thinking about how PGB Pension Services can become more customer-centric.

"Yes, and you know what we think then," a team leader in pension management adds to the story: "The payout date lasts all day. So whether we pay out the monthly amount at 6 a.m. or 11 a.m., either way we meet the SLA (Service Level Agreement) and score a green tick! Process in control, but customer very dissatisfied! This can be so much better with a small intervention," she says enthusiastically. "And that is exactly the movement we need to make as an organization from process-oriented to customer-oriented, summarizes Harold Clijsen CEO of PGB Pension Services.

Harold took his organization through his vision for the future in 2020 at various employee meetings. "The biggest rebuild of the pension system in the past 40 years is just around the corner with the Future of Pensions Act," Harold told us. "Increasing competition and a transparent market is leading to more and more pension funds starting to have similar propositions. Participants increasingly see their pension pot as their own money. How that is sustainably invested, or when and how it is paid out, is becoming increasingly personal. Social partners and employers want more freedom of choice and to see their interests better translated into appropriate services. In these developments," concludes Harold, "lies the need but also the opportunity for pension funds and their administrators to distinguish themselves. And for us as PGB Pension Services, that means that we have to become even more customer-oriented and need more agility to handle all the changes, now and in the future, faster and better."

Acting together

"Harold spoke to the vision of fund and administrator," confirms Ronald Heijn, director of Pensioenfonds PGB since May 2020. "As a fund, we realized very well that it has long been no longer enough just to have excellent pension and investment execution. It's also about being seen as a reliable partner, with a recognizable and consistent brand and attractive services where the customer experience comes first. This is no small change," continues Ronald: "Terms such as 'customer,' 'brand' and 'positioning,' thus gained an increasingly prominent place in the boardroom and boardroom. Questions like 'what are we from, for whom and not for whom' started to be asked and discussed more and more often. And that is not a matter of putting down on paper once. No, it is an internal dialogue in which more and more managers and employees participate. And one that will eventually radiate outwards in the way we serve our employers and participants every day. We are there for our social partners and from the collectivity," Ronald concludes. "We are there for those companies that want to provide social and financial handholding for their employees. That's really important to us."

Read part 2

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 2

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 3

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 4

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