AAI awards for fintech partnerships

The work of the Advanced Analytics Institute in financial technology continues to reap awards and interest for providing industry partners with a competitive edge by improving customer processes – and satisfaction.

Super future insights with CFS

Associate Professor Guandong Xu, Leader of AAi’s Data Science and Machine Intelligence Lab, in collaboration with  superannuation provider Colonial First State (CFS), accepted the Digital Disruptors Gold Award in Skills Transformations of Work Teams by the Australian Computer Society this month.   This industry Award recognises the outstanding teamwork between UTS and CFS in upskilling the CFS Analytics and Business Intelligence team with AI and data analytics.

Dr Xu says the CFS the team can now leverage advanced ICT techniques to enhance its AI capability, build effective and scalable data analytics solutions to assist decision-making and improve customer satisfaction, creating a data-oriented organisational design and working culture. 

Associate Professor and Leader of AAi’s Data Science and Machine Intelligence Lab Dr  Xu explains: “This collaboration crosses a spectrum of activities including contract research projects, Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project applications, internships and the Industry Doctorate Program (IDP), and in-house corporate training which prepares researchers for careers outside of academia.

AAI brings value to CFS through knowledge transformation and technology innovation, and upskilling their staff. We provide high degree research training for CFS’s analytics team via the Industry Doctorate  Program,  and our students get a taste of real-world problem solving, while increasing our research outputs.   A UTS PhD student has also been employed in CFS prior to graduation, reflecting the strong partnership between our organisations. 

For his contribution to developing a distinctive industry-integrated high research degree training program, which  ‘seamlessly combines theoretical and applied research towards research excellence and industry impact’ Dr Xu was a Finalist in the Research Development category of the 2018 UTS VC Research Excellence Awards.

ANZ’s OnePath reinvents insurance experience for customers

Another AAI project awarded Best Industry Application of Data Analytics and the Best Industry Application of Artificial Intelligence, at the Data and AI Innovation Awards, is the underwriting system developed with ANZ OnePath.

AAI has taken ten years of OnePath data and used AI, data science and data analytics to develop a new underwriting system resulting in a more streamlined personal statement that takes less time to complete,  provides customers with more certainty and brings a new era of plain speaking to insurance, says ANZ’s Chief of Underwriting Peter Tilocca,

We are taking underwriting innovation in a new direction, using our own data and harnessing new tools such as AI and data analytics to make insurance a more intuitive and engaging experience.

Dr Xu confirmed the power and value of using AI to transform underwriting.

Using AI to simulate people’s decision making process, we show how AI has used big data, natural language processing and predictive modelling, to revolutionise a huge process such as underwriting.