RFP QUESTION 3.1
What we bring
"What do you feel are your firm’s particular strengths relative to this appointment and how do you think you could add value utilising those strengths?"
We bring together actuarial expertise, behavioural insight and digital delivery capability — all within Marsh. We act as a strategic partner to the Trustee, not just a creative agency, starting from member outcomes and working backwards to communications design.
Technical credibility
Our ability to work confidently with actuarial and technical complexity — while keeping communications clear, balanced and accessible — is central to what we offer. Our team includes people with actuarial and pensions backgrounds, and we work closely with specialists across Marsh. Public-facing communications are technically correct, consistent with scheme rules and appropriately cautious, without defaulting to compliance-driven language.
This is particularly important for CDC-specific concepts: target benefits, collective risk-sharing, valuations and benefit adjustments, where accuracy and tone are equally critical.
Strategic engagement, not just compliant materials
We help trustees define clear communication objectives and design engagement strategies that build understanding and confidence over time. For the Collective Plan, this means working with the Trustee Executive and Member Experience Committee to set clear engagement principles — designing a joined-up framework across statements, letters, website and digital journeys, and supporting members at key life moments including joining, building benefits, valuation outcomes and retirement.
The focus is on helping members understand what their pension is, how it works and what to expect over time without overwhelming them with technical detail.
Trust-building in a CDC environment
Trust is central to the success of a CDC scheme. Impact has extensive experience supporting organisations through sensitive, high-scrutiny communications where outcomes may be uncertain or emotive.
Our approach includes setting expectations early and reinforcing them consistently through storytelling, explaining income for life and lump sum annual adjustments as a design feature rather than a scheme failure if income for life goes down, and reinforcing confidence in Trustee governance and fairness across generations.
Behavioural insight
We design communications around how members read, interpret and respond to information. Our approach draws on the COM-B behaviour change framework — Capability, Opportunity, Motivation — which helps ensure communications build members' ability to understand their pension, remove barriers to engagement, and provide the right motivation to act or absorb information at the right moment.
This includes applying principles such as the framing effect, recognising that how information is presented materially affects member understanding and reaction. In practice, this means framing benefit adjustments within a long-term sustainability narrative, presenting direction of travel rather than false precision, and leading with what a change means for the member before technical explanation.
These techniques are particularly valuable for CDC communications, where poorly framed information can quickly undermine confidence.
Digital delivery capability
Impact is aligned to the Plan's digital-first approach. We design communications specifically for email, websites, member portals and mobile devices.
Our strength lies in helping schemes move progressively towards deeper digital engagement, creating content that works around limitations in portal technology or user experience, and using clear journeys and layered content to reduce confusion. Some of our initial thoughts to the member experience online is shown in our response to question 3.7.
Depth through Marsh
As part of Marsh, Impact combines the focus of a specialist communications team with access to deep pensions, risk, governance and regulatory expertise. This allows us to draw on wider Marsh capability, including actuarial, legal and governance specialists, while at the same time providing the Trustee with a single, accountable communications partner; ensuring consistency and a retained understanding of the Collective Plan over time.
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