Nobody ten years ago could have anticipated the way that technology would have driven digital communication. Nobody but a fool would try and predict how we talk with each other in 2022.

But we can look at how today’s social media works to get ourselves and our clients close, if not ahead, of the curve.

That may not sound ambitious, but we’re nowhere near the curve today. Pensions people have been slow to get social media – so slow that I’m seen as an expert.

My son laughs at that!

If you use Facebook to organise most of your schoolwork and all of your social life, social media isn’t something you’re “looking at” it’s the platform you’re standing on.

Here’s one decent tip my son’s given me

“Dad- it’s about groups”

Facebook. mallowstreet, linked in , IFA life , Total Investor, Money Saving Expert;- what these websites have in common is that they provide online places for people  to meet, find things out and leave their tuppence worth.

Content is found not delivered. People hate to be educated, they love to learn.

What social media does is democratise information, commodatising Intellectual Property so that it’s not the idea but its distributor who’s most valued.

The “Maven” – the human portal through whom information is shared is our new leader.  Martyn Lewis  – Rob Gardner , Phil Calvert and Jonathan Stapleton;- examples of mavens, and they all run on-line communities.

They are the pioneers and their sites are the prototypes for what we will see in years to come. I predict that if you run a leading company, you will look to be your employee’s moneysavingexpert. You will gauge which way the wind blows using regular surveys like Pensions Buzz. You may run your own Mallowstreet for your staff at work and you may run a Linked in group for your alumni – (the best way to track your deferreds)!

If your company doesn’t take the lead and  offer you a financial forum then you and your colleagues may go off and find your own. Everywhere I look, I see new financial groups organising themselves around newpapers, IFAs, consumer sites and insurers.

My prediction’s it will be those who set up, foster and moderate these groups who will be able to win the hearts and minds of members in a post AE-world.

The great datasites that hold our DC records will just be financail libraries.

The tools – the modellers , the online decision trees and retirment planners will  be taken for granted.

The value will rest with those mavens who can demonstrate how to use the data and turn these tools into applications which members can and do return to.

We are social animals. We learn from each other , we do not like to be told but when we hear of a good teacher we rush to listen.

The post AE world will not belong to the salesmen who sold us our 226 and personal pension policies. It will belong to those mavens who can organise us to take the right decisions .

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