Colonial First State signs five-year agreement with Microsoft to fuel its cloud and AI ambitions

SYDNEY – 30 July 2024 – Today, Colonial First State (CFS) and Microsoft announced a five-year agreement that will underpin the wealth management company’s use of cloud and generative AI technologies to deliver better customer and employee outcomes.

Under the agreement, CFS will continue to use Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud provider. The company already relies heavily on Azure to help power its data estate and security infrastructure, using tools such as Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Sentinel.

The agreement will also focus on ensuring CFS drives AI innovation within Australia’s wealth management sector. The company is a successful early adopter of Microsoft’s generative AI technologies, including Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Azure OpenAI Service, with this agreement signalling an expansion of Copilot across their workforce.

“AI and cloud technologies are pivotal in our mission to help Australians achieve financial freedom,” said Jeroen Buwalda, Group Executive of Transformation, Technology and Operations at CFS.

“Our extended partnership with Microsoft places us in a strong position to harness these technologies. It will enable CFS to identify new and innovative ways to deliver enhanced services for our members and the financial advisers we work with.”

Steven Worrall, Managing Director at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, said: “We’re very excited to strengthen our partnership with Colonial First State. Together, we will continue to drive innovation in wealth management and the broader financial services sector.”

The company is working on several generative AI use cases in collaboration with Microsoft and partner Avanade. These include using:  

• Using Azure OpenAI Service to analyse member feedback and gain insights by identifying specific themes and patterns to enhance services and overall member experience.

• Using Azure Open AI Service to assist the CFS FirstTech technical advisory team to quickly locate information from their extensive library of superannuation legislation to answer questions from financial advisers.

• Using Azure Open AI Service to identify ways in which AI can assist CFS contact centre agents by providing faster access to information.

• Microsoft Power Platform’s AI Builder, Power Automate and Power BI tools to analyse and extract insights from feedback provided by financial advisers who work with CFS.

CFS began rolling out Copilot for Microsoft 365 across its workforce in January 2024 to a pilot group, with 75 per cent of employees now having access to the generative AI tool. According to survey data, all pilot group users believe that Copilot is making them more productive, with 40 per cent classified as power users, saving more than 30 minutes per day.

CFS employees have already discovered several valuable use cases for Copilot. They include running market analysis which saved one product manager about 70 per cent of the time required to complete this work and the insights they gained are now being used to prioritise changes. 

A second use case involves speeding up proposal development for process changes, with one employee using Copilot to quickly access a repository from a previous project proposing similar changes. This saved them 90 per cent of the effort and avoided rework.

To learn more about CFS’s AI journey with Microsoft, click here.