Benefits finder Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2019 - Winner

CBA’s purpose is to improve the financial wellbeing of our customers and the community. To help deliver on this, we researched the unsolved global phenomenon of unclaimed social benefits. We found that while ~$115bn1 in welfare payments are made each year in Australia, billions more go unclaimed by vulnerable Australians, due primarily to lack of awareness or complexity to claim. In response, we created Benefits finder, a global-first banking feature focused on an unsolved social problem that also delivers on our purpose. Introduced in Dec-18, it is a targeted digital solution that connects customers in Australia with potentially 250 benefits they may be entitled to, helping to remove the awareness and complexity barriers currently preventing them from claiming. Available in our app and online banking platforms, we utilise our market-leading Customer Engagement Engine to send targeted messages to our customers letting them know they may be eligible for unclaimed benefits. From there we provide an easy to follow process where our customers can discover benefits and begin an application in just a few clicks. Benefits finder was developed utilising a unique, multi-disciplinary team of behavioural economists, data science, digital delivery, UX, strategy and academic partners at Harvard University where we combined global-best research with rigorous experimentation. We estimate Benefits finder will deliver over $150m annually to our customers once fully scaled. We’ve seen significant uptake since Dec-18, having sent targeted messaging to more than 2.2m customers resulting in up to $40m in claims, putting money back into our customers’ pockets.