CFS Adviser Update: March 2024

Hi, I'm Bryce Quirk.

Welcome to our latest update where I'll share news from CFS and the excitingnew initiatives we've got underway for you and your clients.

It's already been a jam packed year, which kicked off with a special edition of our Sustainable Investing Forum, where we had the privilege of hosting former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, and his co-founder of Generation Investment Management, David Blood, in Sydney and in Melbourne.

We also launched 10x, a program designed to support financial advice practices with resources, expert opinions, and practical solutions and ideas to grow your business.

It launched with a well-attended webinar focused on helping advice practices breakthrough efficiency barriers.

Turning to FirstChoice, the platform has had the privilege of being ranked equal number one by advisers across five categories in the 2023 Wealth Insights survey, including overall satisfaction.

For the second year in a row, and we want to ensure, you know, how committed we are to the FirstChoice platform and the investments we're making to strengthen it even further.

In November, we let you know about our new client onboarding experience, which integrates with Xplan, enabling advisers to save up to 80% of the time it typically takes to onboard a new client.

To date, it's been really well received with strong take-up. We continue to enhance and expand our investment menu with over 190 options now available, with over 80% of them rated as 'Recommended or higher' by major research houses.

Better decision making and investment outcomes for your clients is something we promised you last year, which was achieved through new investment outcomes, resulting in double digit returns for a number of our options.

And we also continued our focus on maintaining highly competitive fees and delivering value for your clients.

If integration and expanded menu and great performance weren't enough, managed accounts also remain available at no additional cost.

This puts FirstChoice as a strong competitor for value and efficiency, and we now have over $8.7 billion in managed accounts FUA on FirstChoice.

We continue to receive a significant volume of registrations from advisers and licensees, and to date, Edge has been selected by several leading advice practices, including idaws and Emanuel Whybourne & Loehr.

We recently sat down with Ryan Loehr from EWL to ask them why Edge is their platform of choice.

Well, I think what was quite refreshing to us is you weren't trying to mold our needs into your existing solution.

It was really about what do you need? What do your clients want? What isn't offered at the moment? What are the pain points? And then going out there and, with that technology partner and your team investing in creating that.

And that's exactly how we approach our advice and our relationship with every client.

It's, you tell us what you need, or if it doesn't exist, we'll go to market, we'll build it.

So finding a platform partner that has that same model, I mean, that was so refreshing because all the incumbent providers out there, they don't do that. It's "square peg round hole" scenario.

When it comes to capabilities, our Accelerate Series "meet the manager" webinars confirmed that the combination of low-cost SMAs, without the compromise of menu restriction, is a highly popular one.

We're delighted to be welcoming Infinity Asset Management and Drummond Capital Partners in the coming weeks. And we also continue to actively partner with licensees to develop their own SMAs or MDAs on CFS Edge.

Launches are happening monthly and we now have over 104 retail SMAs with a healthy pipeline of new SMAs coming on board.

We'll soon be adding international managed accounts as well, to give you and your clients direct access to international equities and all the benefits of direct ownership within a managed account structure.

Finally, many of you are keen to learn more about our plans for the move from FirstWrap over to CFC Edge and what this means for your business.

Whilst we're still finalising the timing of the move of FirstWrap and labels, we're currently continuing our planning and testing so that we can deliver an optimal experience for you and your clients.

Understanding the complexities of such a change, we aren't prepared to rush the transfer and compromise on quality.

As I've said before, we remain committed to keeping you well-informed in advance of any plans, and ensure you have the time and resources you need to support you and your clients through the change.

Responsible investing continues to be a priority at CFS.

Our sustainable investment option, Thrive+ sustainable growth, delivered double digit returns of 15.1% in the year ending December 2023.

We think that this demonstrates that a sustainable growth fund can deliver compelling returns for investors, whilst also making a positive contribution to the environment.

And in November, we launched three new multi-sector funds as part of our CFS Builder Series.

We consulted with leading advisers from across Australia who contributed to the design of these innovative funds.

Two of the top requests were for flexibility in targeted drawdowns and cost efficiency when client circumstances change.

We're thrilled with where we've landed with our Builder Series, essentially bringing you a modern risk profiling solution that allows you to dial allocations up or down over time to suit your clients' life stages and circumstances.

This approach can help with mitigating tax implications and reducing transaction costs associated with traditional solutions.

I've spoken before about our crucial role in driving up our support of the advice industry on all levels.

We celebrated International Women's Day with several activities and an exciting announcement.

I'm proud to share that we have nominated advisers for this year's Women in Wealth Awards, alongside four of our own people also nominated for the honours. CFS will be making an even greater commitment to empowering women in advice, and I'll share news with you at my next update on that.

It's already been a blockbuster few months. Our team is working really hard behind the scenes, on both FirstChoice and Edge, to deliver to your needs for a successful 2024.

As always, we'll continue to be led by your feedback to help us amplify what's to come.

See you next time.