Show Me My Future: Data-Driven Storytelling and Pension Communication

In light of current pension reforms driven by the rise in life expectancy, aging populations, and changing labor markets (Merton, 2014), communication about thosereforms and communication to get people activated is crucial. In the Netherlands,communicating efficiently via the existing communication channels is one of thebiggest challenges for the pension sector (Prast et al., 2012), as current reforms canhave severe consequences for different groups of stakeholders. Written communication (such as the yearly pension overview sent by post or email) is often notread or understood by their recipients (Elling & Lentz, 2018; Montae, 2012; PanderMaat & Lentz, 2013), possibly because this type of communication consists of wordsand numbers, which is especially unappealing to people who are used to visualcommunication. Our brain is faster in processing visual information, and we are alsobetter at remembering information transferred in visuals as opposed to text (Potteret al., 2014). Besides this, the content structure of information could be improved bymaking use of storytelling (Sax, 2006). In this paper, we first discuss the status quo ofpension communication in the Netherlands. We then summarize literature from thefields of marketing, economics, and finance on the effects of visuals and storytelling,draw from the field of human data interaction to showcase a series of applications ofvisualization and data-driven storytelling in the pension communication field, anddevelop implications for managers and scientists wanting to work on visualizationsand storytelling.