Give financial planners a break and let them focus on the client

Financial planner bashing has become a national sport. The financial advice industry has battled consumer and media perceptions that advisers are a bunch of cowboys flogging products to line their …

The twilight of China’s population and the dawn of its retirement industry

Most of the developed world has enjoyed a population growth dividend lasting for five or six decades in preparation for dealing with an ageing population. But China has enjoyed only …

Bursting the filter bubble to escape a ‘weatherless world’

From its earliest days, digital technology has sought to help us sift through the information overload to discover relevance. While this promised to broaden our horizons it has in fact …

Self-managed super funds: to 2020 and beyond

Since emerging in the late 1990s, the self-managed super fund (SMSF) sector in Australia has shown uninterrupted growth. According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), as at 31 March 2019, …

How a love for fly-fishing may point the way for global economies

Buried deep in the PhD thesis submitted by Milton Friedman in the late summer of 1940 (note 1) are a couple of jokes, which I really love. The first joke …

Judge AMP not by what it says, but by what it does

People of a certain age may have experienced a sense of déjà vu as AMP unveiled another transformation strategy last week and vowed – once more – to focus on …

The price of running a small business

If you are running a business – micro or small, medium or large – or if you are looking for work, read on; otherwise, this isn’t for you and there …

To make a big change start small, start now, and start with yourself

At CoreData we have recently embarked on a discipline of filling in timesheets correctly and submitting them by close of business on Friday every week. It’s a small but important …

What catching footballs taught me about business intelligence

Recently I had the honour of playing as goalkeeper for a team in the 2018 ASEAN Futsal Club Championship in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where we placed second, the best result of …

A guide to capturing the core-affluent consumer online

Online mortgage application systems are fast becoming a preferred way for “core-affluent” consumers to compare home-loan options and find loans, a new report by CoreData Research’s Mortgage Intelligence Unit (MIU) …

How to stop ‘customer-centricity’ being a meaningless mantra – part two

The challenge facing any organisation seeking to develop a truly customer-centric culture is how to get past paying lip service to an ideal and build a focus on customers into …

How to stop ‘customer-centricity’ being a meaningless mantra – part one

The inescapable mantra across businesses (even government) today, is that the “customer” is at the core of what they do – the idea that “we live to serve”. While many …

Why lazy customers could save you today but kill you tomorrow

In most businesses, customer apathy is not a good thing. If your customer is apathetic, they’re unlikely to feel loyal towards your business, let alone be an advocate for your …

The advantages of a more agile research approach in fast-changing markets

In an environment where there has never been more information readily available to all, consumers and business decision makers alike must have quicker access than ever before to deep research …

Distilling the signals from the noise to map a better path forward

I was once told that the words “data analytics” make business executives go deaf. They are barraged daily with articles, blogs, consultants, salesman, and colleagues talking to them about the …