3 November, 2014
Waikato grad crunching numbers for ANZ
University of Waikato Computer Science graduate Claudia Wu spends her days making sense of numbers to ensure ANZ is
lending responsibly.
With a background in computer science, statistics and data mining, Claudia’s position as a senior portfolio analyst
within the Retail Risk Management division of ANZ, is a great fit.
“Our team manages ANZ’s policies and strategies for retail and business banking. In a typical day, I look after an
analytical ‘data mart’ and make sure the data that comes in is accurate for analytical purposes,” says Claudia.
Claudia also builds models using historical data from the ‘data warehouse’ or the ‘data mart’ to work out what has
happened before, and forecast what could happen in the future. She then uses the data to segment and predict customer
behaviours, calculate ANZ’s profit and loss, and overall, make sure the bank is lending responsibly.
“At ANZ I use the data mining skills I learnt at Waikato University every day. The first step is to understand the data
and the data structure, to know what useful information I have and how to pull it from the database. I then manipulate
the data to the shape I need and apply statistical methods and business knowledge to discover the information I want.
From there I turn that information into knowledge, and use the knowledge to help make business decisions.”
After graduating from University, Claudia worked at Statistics New Zealand for two years, before moving into the banking
industry.
“While at Statistics New Zealand, I worked on a lot of social surveys, including the Household Labour Force Survey,
Household Income Survey, Disability Survey and more. Each of these surveys collected information from New Zealand
households, and the information has been used to help the government to look into the policies that can improve New
Zealanders’ standard of living.”
Claudia did her research before deciding on a degree. “I went online to Seek and found the number of jobs was increasing
in the field of analysis, which requires people to know about databases, statistics and business knowledge. These job
ads were often on the web longer than others, and I realised there could be a shortage of people who can do both
database programming and analysis.”
With this in mind, Claudia structured her degree accordingly, deciding to major in Computer Science, but with supporting
papers in Statistics and Mathematics.
“Amazingly, I haven’t found any method (during work or training) that I haven’t heard of or studied before. I think the
lecturers at Waikato did a fantastic job to choose the material and cover all the necessary topics. It just makes life
so much easier at work!”
Claudia completed the majority of her high school studies in China, before moving to New Zealand and completing Year 13
at Avondale College in Auckland.
ENDS