Enabling 460,000 scheme members to effortlessly control their pensions online

Background

The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) is one of the UK’s largest private pension providers for university and higher education staff. Since 1974, USS has delivered retirement benefits to nearly 460,000 members across 340 institutions. Committed to exceptional service, USS manages both the pension schemes and most investments directly, ensuring quality and accountability for members and employers.

Business Drivers

USS set out to boost customer self-service and drive up satisfaction scores. They needed a digital platform that would empower their entire team to deliver a seamless, unified online experience - making it easy for members to find information and manage their accounts.

To achieve this, USS aimed to modernise their digital services, offering members and employers a smoother online journey with more self-serve options, all designed to improve satisfaction results.

Before our work together, many USS processes relied on paper forms. For example, customers had to print, hand-complete, and mail forms just to update personal details - a system that slowed everyone down and made life harder for both customers and staff.

USS recognised the need to digitise and streamline these processes, improving customer experiences, lowering operating costs, and increasing efficiency for their teams.

Solution

From the start, we partnered with USS to deeply understand their vision and how digital solutions could help them achieve it, making sure everything we did matched their business goals.

The new USS website and My USS customer portal has transformed and streamlined legacy processes. Now, the entire digital team, from developers to marketers, can manage and update content easily, with user-friendly tools for editing and creating new content without needing developer support.

Workflows that once required printing and mailing forms - like simply updating an address - are now fully digital and self-serve. Members can change their details online in minutes, empowering them and removing outdated paper steps.

As we rebuilt the USS website and portal, we ensured seamless integration with USS’s administrative systems. Members can now update contact information, manage dependents, update expressions of wish, and adjust monthly contributions, all from a single portal, without jumping between multiple sites.

Our work enabled USS to sync data, automate workflows, and connect to critical systems, streamlining internal operations and boosting efficiency.

USS now delivers a smooth, accessible customer experience, letting members manage their pensions simply and confidently. Plus, by leveraging the DXP’s personalisation capabilities, USS can serve up targeted content and tailored messages, ensuring every visitor sees information that’s relevant to them.

Outcome

 

With a leading DXP, we’ve created a rich, personalised digital experience for USS members and employers. Every detail of the interface reflects USS’s core values and brand, with design choices shaped by their brand guidelines for a unified visual experience.

The new USS website and My USS portal put users first, making once-complex tasks simple and intuitive. By transforming old analogue processes into digital, self-serve journeys, we’ve boosted efficiency for both members and USS teams.

Hosted on Microsoft Azure, this modern, flexible platform features advanced analytics and top-tier security - ready to support USS now and as demand grows.

 

This sets USS up for a future of continuing digital innovations and enhancements that will further improve customer experiences and ensure their platform has the ability to comfortably deal with dramatic spikes in customer demand.