I recently joined Broadstone's Broadcast podcast as a guest, alongside a Business Development Manager from Aries Insight, a business that helps professional trustees understand pension legislation and stay on top of the priorities that matter most to the schemes they serve.
It was one of those conversations that covered a lot of ground, moved quickly, and left me thinking about a few things long after the recording finished.
Trustees and communicators come at member outcomes from different directions. But the underlying mission is recognisably similar: take something that is genuinely difficult to understand and make it clear.
The starting point for a lot of what we do at FCX Technologies is a stubborn fact: 76% of individuals report difficulties understanding pension communications. That number has not moved much. Members are still receiving largely the same static, generic documents they received twenty years ago, even as regulatory expectation around consumer understanding has increased significantly.
You cannot have good member outcomes without both governance and communication getting it right.
There is a lot of loose talk in this industry about personalisation. What Video Canvas Hyper-Personalised actually does is generate every sentence a member hears around their individual data. Their pension pot. Their retirement date. Their contribution history. Not a version of a communication they happen to fit into, but a communication built around them, delivered as an interactive video experience, running entirely within the client's own infrastructure.
That last point matters more than it might seem. Member data never leaves the client's estate. FCX Technologies is not a data controller or data processor. In a regulated industry, that is a meaningful distinction.
One theme that came through strongly in the conversation was the challenge of staying current with legislative developments. It is relentless, and getting it wrong has consequences for trustees and for members.
We face a version of the same challenge on the communications side. Video Canvas is built to handle this. Because experiences are assembled in real time from pre-rendered components, content can be updated quickly when rates, rules, or legislation changes. A change flows through to what members see without a full rebuild. That structural flexibility is one of the things that makes it suitable for a sector that does not stand still.
This was probably the part of the conversation that generated the most energy. AI is already embedded in what we do: AI-driven avatars produced by the Video Canvas studio team using the latest AI video generation technologies and highest quality voice synthesis, and the dynamic generation that powers Video Canvas Hyper-Personalised. So we were not speaking about AI as a future possibility. We were speaking about it as a current reality and asking what it means.
The opportunity is real. Personalisation at the individual level, at a meaningful scale, was not practically achievable five years ago. AI has changed that. And the accessibility case is genuinely compelling: complex financial topics that previously required a financial adviser to explain can now be communicated clearly, personally, and at scale.
The risks are also real. AI-generated financial content that is not grounded in accurate, compliant source material is a liability. Our position is straightforward: everything spoken in a Video Canvas experience is scripted, reviewed, and signed off before it is generated. The AI produces the output. Humans remain responsible for the content.
The broader question of whether AI is a force for good in financial services is one I find myself coming back to. In the specific context of member communications, I think the answer is yes, provided it is applied with rigour, oversight, and accountability. The 76% problem is large and consequential. If AI helps close that gap, that is a good thing.
The conversation finished by reflecting on what we each want to see in the next few years. For me, it is straightforward: Video Canvas Hyper-Personalised becomes the expectation, not the exception. Firms stop debating whether to communicate this way and start debating which experience to build next. And we see documented improvement in member comprehension and engagement across the industry, not just anecdotal wins.
The one change I would most like to see is clearer industry-wide standards for what consumer understanding actually means as evidence. Consumer Duty raised the bar in principle. But the evidential bar is still loosely defined in practice. If regulators and firms agreed on what proof of comprehension looks like, investment would flow to the right tools and accountability for outcomes would follow. That would be good for members. And it would be good for the businesses trying to serve them well.
If you would like to hear the full conversation, you can listen to the Broadstone Broadcast podcast here: https://rss.com/podcasts/the-broadcast/2973899/
If you would like to discuss how Video Canvas from FCX Technologies could support your member communications, we would welcome the conversation.
Contact the team at fcxtechnologies.com/contact.
"Great video content is so engaging for members, especially when it is deeply personalised to them. We chose to partner with Video Canvas, not just for great tech, but for their creativity and their strong focus on security."
Chris Connelly
Chief Strategy Officer
