Colonial First State (CFS) has launched CFS 10x, designed to help financial advice practices grow their business.
This is comprised of four key pillars: Your Business, Your People, Your Clients and Your Expertise.
It will include a series of dedicated national events and webinars and masterclasses, with experts to give advisers access to education and expertise to help them achieve their goals.
One of the first events on 28 February will give advisers access to peer benchmarking and insights from a national industry-wide research study into practice management and productivity.
This was conducted by Elixir Consulting to examine what advisers say is working well and what is holding them back from achieving their goals as well as industry benchmarks to help them break through efficiency barriers and understand effective ways to structure teams and business models.
CFS group executive for distribution, Bryce Quirk, said: “This year CFS will be using both research and practice case studies into the key drivers of business growth to help advisers unlock opportunities. Driving efficiency, achieving scale and expanding your tech capabilities are just some of the areas CFS 10x will be exploring with practices this year.
“We know that advisers are looking for practical solutions when it comes to people management and developing a high-performance team.”
“We also know that practices are eager to understand how they can automate their processes to unlock efficiencies and provide even better service to more clients,” he added.
Last year, CFS launched its Edge wealth management platform, developed following feedback from advice firms. This features two-way integration with financial planning software Iress Xplan and AdviserLogic, while fintech providers will have the ability to access a developer portal to build their own connections.
Edge offers super, pension, investment and managed account capabilities as well as advanced modelling tools to support portfolio analysis.
Quirk noted: “What’s topical for all [advisers] is the cost to serve and profitability, and the requirements for advice practices to be efficient, and a lot of the Edge design is targeted at meeting those needs which has ultimately reduced the time to use the platform and improved the accuracy of the data.”
