Zedra has partnered with Heka Global on the launch of an AI tracing service, designed to reconnect pension scheme members with lost retirement savings.

The project is designed to enable the integration of Heka’s technology for Zedra's clients via a dedicated technical architecture.

This is intended to help smaller schemes access economies of scale typically unavailable to them, while enabling larger schemes to operate more swiftly and efficiently than with traditional solutions.

The project was launched following a pilot period, which successfully traced 50 per cent of applicable members previously unreachable by commercial tracing services.

Commenting on the collaboration, Zedra Governance head of proposition development, Mark Stopard, commented: “With more than £31bn in unclaimed entitlements, and more than three million inactive or lost pension pots, re-uniting pension members with their full retirement benefits is one of the biggest challenges facing the pension industry today.

“Making sure all members receive their benefits is a core fiduciary duty, as is controlling the financial costs of missing member data. Further to that, tracing these individuals will allow schemes to significantly boost their ability to re-engage members."

In addition to the rising number of unclaimed pensions, Heka business development manager, Max Lack, suggested that changes in members’ communication preferences have also exacerbated the trustees’ challenge of restoring contact, as traditional postage is being overtaken by numerous digital channels.

“Many of the toughest challenges in the pensions sector – de-risking data exercises, dashboard readiness, retirement adequacy – stem from missing member data. Get this solved and things start to become easier," he stated.

"Emergent AI tools offer a powerful solution to addressing these data gaps, and our recent pilot with clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach. We look forward to working together to bring the same benefits to further pension scheme clients.”

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