How super funds should implement AI

Superannuation funds should narrow their artificial intelligence (AI) focus to specific business challenges, such as customer service and then iterate the solution, according to PwC.

Speaking at an international business review webinar, Professor Matthew Kuperholz, chief data scientist at PwC, said super funds should avoid being too abstract with AI and rather consider the technology through the lens of attempting to change a behaviour.

“The important thing is getting the question right then doing something meaningful with the answer,” Kuperholz said.

Kuperholz said the vaccine rollout provided a real-world example of the capability of AI as it was used to analyse data from past research and organise the logistics of the rollout, substantially cutting down on time needed to undertake it.

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He said tackling customer service and customer retention business challenges were good places to start.

Some of the examples he provided was using AI to assist customers with self-service, helping them to give feedback, analysing member messages and assisting call centre staff.

“There is still a lot of data about the type of members that churn, the type of members we want to keep, the right offers to put in front of them, the right way to word that, the right channel, the right message, and we use AI to shape our communications,” he said.

Kuperholz said AI could be used to assist super funds with the business challenge of giving people advice around their personal tax circumstances, whether through automated robo-advice or through assisting a human advisor with smart knowledge management.