Amber Auld (left), Jason Entwistle and Clive van Horen. Chris Dastoor May 6, 2026 Save Article The head of Colonial First State has turned to AI to create a “clone” of himself to help boost his own productivity as the emerging technology continues to reshape all levels of financial services organisations. “I tried this a year and a half ago and it didn’t really work with the tools we were using, [but we’re] using a different tool now,” Colonial First State group CEO Clive van Horen told a Financial Services Council event in Sydney on Thursday morning. “It’s getting better and better every day. Maybe my job is gone one day, that will be a great day. It’s able to review board papers, even write my own board paper. 80 per cent of the job is done by the [AI] agent. Obviously, my job is to own it.” Amber Auld, Microsoft Australia and New Zealand head of capital markets, insurance and banking, said there are numerous low-risk opportunities for AI integration across financial services. She pointed to Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index – released Tuesday night – which found 58 per cent of those surveyed said their productivity has been lifted because of AI. “One thing stood out to me is that 58 per cent of the people studied in that survey said that they can get more done now than over the past year than they could have imagined.inarticlefluid “It’s expanding human ingenuity,” Auld said. “For some of the faster-moving firms it’s over 80 per cent talking about, just being able to do more.” As for how this would disrupt the advice profession, van Horen said people are already using AI for financial advice but would still need human help. “Any of you can go onto your favourite tool and [ask] for example, ‘I’ve inherited $100,000 what should I do?’. It will give you – let’s call it personal advice – unregulated, unlicensed but it’s there,” van Horen said. “The collision of traditional, regulated industries like ours and what’s possible, people are just going to do it anyway. Most people want to have a human in the loop. The opportunity is human plus AI.” HUB24 director for strategic development Jason Entwistle countered that those getting financial advice aren’t interested in being served by AI. “These are people that sought advice and not enough people can get advice, but they have it sorted and they want piece of mind – they’re not going to trust a chatbot to give them the answer,” van Horen said. Van Horen said people’s trust in AI is going to go down, not up, as it impacts theirday to day lives. “There’s an interesting challenge ahead of us in AI… the brand of AI is going down, not up,” van Horen said. “There’s a big responsibility for on us as AI leaders and practitioners for how we’re going to help people adapt. We need to help find ways to re-skill people.” The challenge for financial services organisations was balancing innovation with governance and van Horen said regulation was important for keeping the industry safe. “It would be simplistic to say it would be easy to deploy AI, especially when you’re getting more ambitious of deploying agents which do their own thing into the business at scale because you’ve got to do it safely. We all know the risks of what can go badly wrong.” AI, amber auld, artificial intelligence, CFS, Clive van Horen, Colonial First State, HUB24, jason entwistle, microsoft Leave a Comment Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment. scnative1 scnative2 scnative3 We also recommend Licensees Fintech looks to add 50 advisers in three years with private advisory launch Technology People are already using AI for financial advice, so let’s make it safe Industry HUB24 moves ahead with acquiring trustee service Technology 1 Testing the platform hype against the adviser’s reality Technology Licensees Fintech looks to add 50 advisers in three years with private advisory launch Wealth management fintech Openmarkets has revealed plans to expand into private wealth with the goal of adding 50 financial advisers to its AFSL in the next three years as it pivots to a B2B model in the aftermath of regulatory action that has been settled with ASIC. Chris Dastoor May 05, 2026 Technology People are already using AI for financial advice, so let’s make it safe Paul Feeney April 28, 2026 Industry HUB24 moves ahead with acquiring trustee service Chris Dastoor April 21, 2026 Technology 1 Testing the platform hype against the adviser’s reality Simon Hoyle April 14, 2026 Sort content by Most recent Oldest Popular Load More