Digital innovation

With the “View or update member information” feature introduced this year, you can now view, edit, and make changes to an individual plan member’s information through the plan sponsor website. 

We launched a new page that shows up to 13 months of pre-authorized withdrawal (PAW) history. Before this update, only your past five records were available online. Viewing additional records required contacting your Group Retirement Services representative. Now you can view PAW history for over a year without having to reach out to anyone.*

* This update is available for sponsors who currently remit via pre-authorized withdrawals. If you don’t have access to this feature, please contact you Group Retirement Services representative.

As part of our continued work on enhancing the Sponsor Experience and the digitization of our business, we’re creating the so called “How to” videos. A series of overview videos to help you easily navigate the plan sponsor website and to make your experience even smoother. The videos include:

• Overview of the Plan Sponsor site
• How to upload a demographic information file
• How to upload a contribution file
• View or Update Member Information
• Member Enrol experience overview
• Enrolment and payroll report video

And more are coming soon.

The videos are also available on the features’ pages on the secure site.

We’ve given a new look and feel to the “Enrol a member” feature on the secure sponsor site. Our new interface offers an updated user experience, validations to ensure accurate data entry and other technical upgrades. These improvements aim to simplify the user journey and allow for a stronger user experience.

We’ve recently launched major updates on the plan member secure site, including a new home page, decommissioning my financial centre, and enhanced navigation within the website. This significant redesign will help make it easier for members to understand and move around the site more efficiently. With these enhancements we are looking to deliver the following value to members*:

• A net reduction in navigation times by 50%.
• Increase average success time on some transactions from 7% to 90%.
• An increase in retirement plan creation, driven by My Plan, by 84%. Plan creation as a downstream positive impact of overall balances and retirement readiness.

Learn more about this important digital initiative here.

* Based on results we have seen from user testing and observations within Sun Life member base.

Lump Sum Contributions is a great capability available to plan members on the GRS member site. The redesigned flow features a modern look and introduce enhancements that ensure a more concise flow and make it easier for plan members to make contributions to their plan. These enhancements include:

• Integrated savings calculator that helps to inform and support member’s decision through real-time feedback.
• Updated content to align with plain language guidelines, making it easier for members to understand and move quicker through the process.
• Retooled the banking collection step to help reduce errors when processing contributions that have incorrect banking information.

Another exciting launch of this year is the new digital Asset Consolidation tool. The tool has been recently launched to all members, after a successful pilot. The new digital experience will help support members moving their assets from another institution into your group plan. This will improve our current process by significantly reducing the need for paper-based forms for our most commonly used products.

Sun Life continues to make improvements to the mobile app to provide plan members with a simplified and convenient experience. This year, e-beneficiary feature started to be available in the my Sun Life mobile app. This means that plan members can now add or edit their beneficiaries anytime, anywhere from their mobile devices. The e-beneficiary feature on the mobile app has all the same capabilities as on the web (mysunlife.ca).

Sponsor Request Centre was one of the most anticipated launches of 2023. With a completion of a successful pilot, we've started the full rollout and are now gradually offering the Sponsor Request Centre to all our Clients. With the ongoing launch of online capabilities, our goal is to provide you with a simplified and convenient experience to help you manage your plan. With the Sponsor Request Centre, you will be able to send, receive and manage your requests with Sun Life, all in one place! This will also help to improve transparency and efficiency within operations.

If you are still not using Sponsor Services website, contact your Sun Life GRS representative to get a user ID. Don’t miss out on all the great features available to you, get online today!

This year, we fully renewed the Sponsor Resource Centre - our education and communications hub to help you support your employees’ financial wellness. In addition to the new look and feel that corresponds to our most recent brand design, the new site offers an improved navigation and a new tab with some additional materials.

In 2023, we’ve updated our Client Care Centre to a new cloud-based platform to help us direct member calls to the right team more quickly and efficiently. This new platform (Amazon Connect) will improve our phone system and help us serve plan members better, creating a more seamless experience for them.

You can learn more about the CCC new and improved features here.

This year we held several contests designed to encourage plan members to sign in or register for their Sun Life account on mysunlife.ca and/or the mySun Life mobile application. As a result, members could get quick and easy access to their accounts and take advantage of key features and various digital tools offered to them.