CFS determined to use its Edge

It is a measure of Colonial First State’s consultations with financial advisers around the development of its CFS Edge platform offerings that while the Government may be intent on scrapping the safe harbour steps advisers are still able to validate client best interest.

CFS group executive, distribution, Bryce Quirk has told Financial Newswire that the feedback from advisers has been that irrespective of the direction pursued out of the Quality of Advice Review (QAR) advisers still need to act in accordance with client best interest.

“So, whether it is codified or not, we want to give them that capability,” he said.

Recent analysis by Morningstar and Wilsons Advisory has pointed to the degree to which the dynamics of the Australian platform market have altered over the past 18 months, not least because of the Commonwealth Bank’s 2020 decision to sell a 55% interest in CFS to global investment firm KKR.

KKR promptly signalled its intention to invest $430 million in CFS and the primary product of that investment has been the development of CFS Edge which has allowed the business to take the technology fight up to the likes of HUB24 and Netwealth.

Quirk acknowledges the importance of that investment and the manner in which it delivered CFS the ability to pursue a strategy to reinvent the business and build a new platform the abilities of which are now being experienced by the market.

At the same time as KKR was funding the development of the new CFS approach, after years of trying to sell the BT Panorama platform, Westpac decided to retain ownership and to commit to continuing investment in the business.

The bottom line is that both Morningstar and Wilsons Advisory are now recognising that the dynamics of the platform marketplace have changed and that this has slowed and, in some cases, reversed the drift of market share to HUB24 and Netwealth.

Quirk is reluctant to get into commentary on the changes to the dynamics of the platform market but said that the level of investment in the CFS Edge platform meant that it was at the beginning of a journey.

And that journey, not unlike the journey followed by BT with its Panorama technology, means that the CFS legacy products of CFS FirstWrap will be progressively migrated to Edge technology.

The migration of those products to the Edge technology occurs alongside the company’s impending launch of its Accelerate 100 managed accounts offering with the recent promise of zero administration fees.