CFS inks five-year cloud & GenAI deal with Microsoft

Colonial First State (CFS) has followed a number of its financial services sector peers in securing a multi-year tech deal with Microsoft, extending its access to the bigtech’s Azure cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The five-year deal effectively extends the wealth management firm’s longstanding partnership with the bigtech, with the agreement establishing Microsoft Azure as CFS’s 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,” Microsoft wrote in a statement confirming the deal.

The agreement also extends CFS’s pilot deployment of Microsoft’s Generative AI technologies in January this year, including the embedded Copilot for Microsoft 365 system.

As well, the deal will see CFS expand its use of the Azure OpenAI Service, a tool enabling developers to leverage and customise one of the bigtech’s numerous large language models (LLMs), including GPT-3.5-Turbo and GPT-4 (for text outputs), DALL-E (for image generation), Whisper (for speech to text transcription), Babbage and Davinci.

CFS group executive of transformation, technology and operations Jeroen Buwalda said the extended partnership with Microsoft will enable the business “to identify new and innovative ways to deliver enhanced services for our members and the financial advisers we work with”.

CFS reports that around three-quarters of its workforce now has access to Copilot, representing more than 1,000 staff.

Among the case studies being explored include the use of Azure OpenAI Service to identify core themes and patterns in customer and adviser feedback (leveraging Microsoft Power Platform’s AI Builder, Power Automate and Power BI tools), as well as advanced chatbot capabilities to assist call centre staff and advisers in accessing information.

CFS follows a number of financial services peers in securing multi-year cloud and GenAI deals with Microsoft, including life insurer TAL, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac.