Creating the future you want to see


To help service their clients better, advisers need a strong business partner that continually evolves and innovates to help identify opportunities and future-proof advice businesses.
Colonial First State (CFS) has launched a collaboration with the University Of Technology Sydney (UTS) Advanced Analytics Institute, to deliver exceptional analysis and market-leading insights for advisers. UTS is working with CFS on building a set of predictive and prescriptive models to help businesses understand which customers are more likely to redeem their investment in the near future.
Organisations like CFS are generating a lot of rich data about investors’, super members’ and retirees’ attitudes and behaviours. It can also develop great insights about advisers and how their businesses perform against a broader advice landscape from these data prints. CFS Executive General Manager, Linda Elkins, said “We firmly believe in the power of data and analytics and already have strong in-house capabilities. UTS people and CFS people will now have opportunities to work together on practical projects in which everyone can develop their skills.”
The models CFS and UTS have developed allow CFS to observe complex relationship patterns between investors, employers, financial planners and competitors, and achieve more accurate predictions than other, more traditional approaches. This capability demonstrates CFS’s strong credentials in innovation and broadens the potential for delivering deeper insights into the future.
Dean of the Engineering and IT Faculty at UTS, Professor Ian Burnett, said UTS is driving excellence and innovation through industry engagement. This landmark CFS-UTS agreement means both parties will expand a framework of mutually beneficial programs, projects and activities which include collaborative research projects, an industry Doctorate program, HDR/PhD student projects including student internships, Capstone projects, training and development, contract research and other opportunities.
CFS is committed to developing new ways to gain valuable insights into the changing financial and demographic landscape. Initiatives like this – together with platform enhancements including the new online applications and the Accelerator Cash Account – enable advisers to better understand and service their clients.
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