Coles aims to keep it simple in financial services push
Groceries giant, Coles, will keep its offers as simple as possible, as it expands its position in the financial services sector, Coles Financial Services general manager, Richard Wormald says.
Speaking at the 2014 Money Management Platforms and Wraps Conference, Wormald said the supermarket chain planned to "bring a retail flavour" to financial services beyond its existing credit card and insurance offerings.
Wormald said the lessons learnt from the business's current financial services offers, including the need for simplicity, would form the backbone of any new products, including superannuation.
He told delegates that the "no annual fee" offer had been an integral part of the company's success in the credit card sector.
"Going with a product that's simple, and there's no fee, is beginning to resonate and that's one of the reasons we've improved our customer preference," he said.
"We've started to bring in a retail flavour to what we're doing in this sector and that will hopefully amount in future to a high degree of trust to move into other sectors.
"I think often in financial services we make our products too complicated and customers don't understand them."
Wormald told delegates that the retailer was looking at the possibility of establishing a Coles superannuation fund as part of its expansion into the sector.
"I don't know if we can make it as simple [as the insurance offering]," he said.
"[However], I think we can make it simpler than it is today, and I think there might be ways in which we can tie a super offer into what we do in the supermarket, [like] the point stacking offer we have with other offers [where consumers receive more FlyBuys points per dollar spent in the supermarket if they have Coles financial services products].
"I'm sure we can do that with super during the accumulation phase, ‘move your super to Coles and save more in the supermarket', [but] I also wonder during the drawdown phase, could we do something at that phase as well, because at that time groceries actually become one of the largest expenses in any family.
"It's certainly an area we're thinking about at the moment."
AUTHOR
Nicholas O'Donoghue
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