AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL SEVICES LICENSE NUMBER – 292281
ABN – 52 115 516 955
POSTAL ADDRESS:
Risk Partners Pty Ltd
23 Cremorne Street
Cremorne, Victoria 3121
PHONE – +61 3 9929 9800
EMAIL – INFO@RISKPARTNERS.COM.AU
THE PURPOSE OF THIS GUIDE
This Financial Services Guide (FSG) is designed to assist you in deciding whether to use any of our services and contains important information about:
- The services we offer you
- How we and our associates are paid
- Any potential conflicts of interest we may have
- What to do in the event of a complaint
RESPONSIBILITY FOR SERVICES PROVIDED
We hold a current Australian Financial Services Licence and are authorised to advise and deal in the full spectrum of general insurance products.
We are responsible for the financial services provided to you, or through you to your family members, including the distribution of this FSG.
We are required to meet high standards for staff training, organisational competence, management expertise, financial control and compliance disciplines.
We have an ongoing requirement to maintain and enhance our professionalism to ensure that you receive fair and honest Financial Services from us.
WHO DO WE ACT FOR
We usually act on your behalf and in your interests in all matters. Sometimes, it may be more appropriate for us to access insurance or manage claims where we act as an agent of the insurer. If and when this situation arises we will explain and highlight this to you.
BINDER ARRANGEMENT
In arranging some contracts of insurance, we will be acting under an authority given to us by the insurer to bind cover on their behalf. Where this is the case we will identify this to you in our quote letter. This arrangement with insurers means that we are required to act in their interests in binding the insurance. For this contract of insurance we are therefore acting in the interests of the insurer taking into consideration your risks.
OUR SERVICES
We offer a range of services to assist you to protect your assets and guard against unexpected liabilities including:
- Reviewing and advising on your insurance needs
- Identifying risk factors to avoid claims
- Seeking competitive premium quotations
HOW TO CONTACT US
You are able to contact us by phone, in writing, by email or in person.
OUR PRODUCTS
We can advise and arrange a broad range of insurances on your behalf including:
Home Building and Contents, Business Packages, Liability, Industrial, and Professional covers.
RETAIL CLIENTS
Under the Corporation Act 2001 (The Act) Retail Clients are provided with additional protection from other clients. The Act defines Retail Clients as:
Individuals or a manufacturing business employing less than 100 people or any other business employing less than 20 people And that are purchasing the following types of insurance covers:
Motor vehicle, home building, contents, personal and domestic, sickness/accident/travel, consumer credit and other classes as prescribed by regulations.
Some of the information in this FSG only applies to Retail Clients and it is important that you understand if you are covered by the additional protection provided.
RETAIL CLIENT ISSUES
Typically we only provide General Advice to our Retail Clients. General Advice does not take into account your particular needs and requirements and you should consider the appropriateness of this advice to your circumstances prior to acting upon it. We will provide you with a General Advice warning in such cases.
If you are a Retail Client and obtain Personal Advice, that is, advice that takes into account your particular circumstances, we will give you a Statement of Advice (SOA), that sets out the advice provided and the basis on which the advice is made and our remuneration should you purchase the product.
For existing Retail Clients we may not provide an SOA but rather provide the advice to you orally. In such cases you may request us to provide you with a Record of Advice (via phone or in writing) which we will provide to you within 28 days of such request.
When you ask us to recommend an insurance policy for you, we will usually only consider the policies offered by the insurers or insurance providers that we deal with regularly. In giving you advice about the costs and terms of recommended polices we have not compared those policies to other policies available, other than from those insurers we deal with regularly.
If recommendations about the purchase of a particular financial product are made in the SOA, we will also give you a Product Disclosure Statement at that time, which sets out details specific to that product and the key benefits and risks in purchasing the product.
WHAT WE EXPECT FROM YOU
To enable us to provide the right advice we need you to provide us with complete information about the risk(s) that you face and those that you want to be insured for.
You should also tell us about any relevant changes as they occur so that we can review your insurance needs accordingly.
Of course we also ask you to pay our invoices on time and complete all proposal forms honestly, accurately and return them to us by the required date.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
The Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles sets out standards for the collection and management of personal information. With your consent, we will only use your personal information for general insurance services.
CLAIMS
We will try and take the pain out of the claims process by assisting and advising you in regard to the scope of cover and explaining how the claims process works.
We will promptly forward to you all claims documentation, settlement cheques and other information.
The Insurer makes the decisions on whether the claim is valid or not.
COOLING OFF PROVISIONS
All retail products are subject to at least a 14 day cooling off period. This means that if you are not happy with the product, you have 14 days to withdraw from the contract at no cost to you.
OUR SOURCES OF INCOME
When placing your insurance we usually receive a commission from the insurer, which varies between 0% and 27.5% of the base premium you pay. This type of remuneration is standard for insurance brokers. The insurer pays us out of its premium and the commission is not specifically disclosed in your invoice.
When we give you Personal Advice, full commission details (including the dollar amounts) will be provided in any SOA or (where an SOA is not required to be provided) included on any relevant invoices. When we give you General Advice, full commission information (including dollar amounts) will be provided on request.
We have a set of standard Broker Fees that we charge you for the cost of services such as:
- Market research on products available.
- Assessing the claims paying ability of insurers.
- Sourcing alternative quotations and coverage.
- Risk analysis and portfolio co-ordination.
All fees payable for our services will be advised to you at the time of providing the advice or service.
All fees and commission are fully earned at inception of the policy.
We retain the interest on premiums paid by you that are held in our trust account before paying the insurer.
Premium funding products enable you to pay your invoice by instalments. Premium funders do charge interest. We can arrange premium funding if you require it. We will normally receive a commission of between 1% and 3% of the amount funded from the Premium Funder for arranging the funding. We will tell you the basis and amount of any such payment if you ask us.
HOW OUR REPRESENTATIVES ARE PAID
Our representatives do not receive any benefit directly from the sale of a product to you. Our representatives may receive bonuses payable based on the overall performance of our business.
If a person has referred you to us, we may pay them a part of any fees or commission received. This will be disclosed in any SOA you receive.
PREMIUM AND INVOICE CALCULATION
We make every effort to correctly determine the premium and statutory charges that apply to your insurance. In the event of a miscalculation you agree that you will not hold Risk Partners responsible for any loss suffered and you will make full payment of the correct amount.
STEADFAST MEMBERSHIP
We are a Steadfast Group Limited (Steadfast) Equity Broker and have access to member services including model operating and compliance tools, procedures, manuals and training, legal, technical, HR, contractual liability advice and assistance, group insurance arrangements, product comparison and placement support, claims support, group purchasing arrangements and broker support services. These services are either funded by Steadfast, subsidised by Steadfast or available exclusively to Steadfast Network Brokers for a fee.
Steadfast has arrangements with some insurers and premium funders (Partners) under which the Partners pay Steadfast a fee to access strategic and technological support and the Steadfast Broker Network. Steadfast is also a shareholder of some Partners.
You can obtain a copy of Steadfast’s FSG at www.steadfast.com.au
COMPLAINTS
Clients who are not fully satisfied with our services should contact our Complaints Officer. We are members of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), a free consumer service. Further information is available from our office, or contact AFCA directly:
Australian Financial Complaints Authority
GPO Box 3, Melbourne, Vic 3001
1800 931 678 (the cost of a local call within Australia)
Email: info@afca.org.au
Website: www.afca.org.au
We also follow the Insurance Brokers Code of Practice
COMPENSATION
We hold a Professional Indemnity Policy. This policy is designed to pay claims by Third Parties (including our clients) arising out of our Professional Negligence. The policy extends to cover us for work done for us by representatives/employees after they cease to work for us and satisfies the requirements for compensation arrangements under Section 912B of The Act.
CONTACT AGREEMENT
To ensure that we provide you with appropriate products and services, you agree to us calling you to discuss any new products and services. If you do not wish to receive such calls please advise us and we will place you on our Do Not Call Register.
ELECTRONIC DELIVERY OF DISCLOSURE NOTICES
Please note that where possible we prefer to provide all correspondence and disclosure notices (including Financial Services Guides and Product Disclosure Statements) to you electronically, via email attachments or email links to documents/websites etc. If you have provided your email address to us we will typically use that email address for all correspondence and disclosure notices. Should you not wish to be sent disclosure documents electronically please advise us and we will update our records accordingly.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
As a business we have relationships with and receive income from various third parties as detailed in this FSG. Details of relationships that impact the advice that we provide will be included in any SOA we send you. We will give you further information regarding relationships and remuneration that may impact any General Advice provided by us or our representatives upon request. All material conflicts that impact our advice which are not mentioned in this FSG will be advised to you on the invoices related to that advice
When Does This FSG Apply From
This FSG was prepared on the 8th November 2021