People Disclosure

Licensing information

We operate as a Financial Advice Provider under a current licence issued by the Financial Markets Authority in the name of NZ Financial Services Group Limited: Home Loan Specialists Ltd (FSP1005660).

There are no conditions attached to this licence on the advice that may be given.

Our advice and Product Providers

We provide advice to our clients about life insurance and home loan and products.

Commission

On settlement of a loan or issuance of a policy, we usually receive commission from the applicable product provider. The commission is generally of an upfront nature but may also include a renewal or trail commission.

This commission is used to remunerate the financial adviser that provides the advice, and to pay the expenses associated with running our business including any rent, staff costs and IT resources. From this commission we also pay NZ Financial Services Group Limited for services they provide to us in connection with our authorisation under their licence from the Financial Markets Authority.

We take steps to ensure that the receipt of commissions does not influence the advice we give to you and that our advisers prioritise your interests by recommending the best product for your purpose regardless of the type and amount of commission we or they may receive. We do this by:

• Ensuring our advisers follow an advice process that ensures they understand your needs and goals and that their recommendations on insurance cover meets those needs and goals.
• Ensuring our advisers receive regular training on how to manage conflicts of interest.
• Providing you with a schedule showing commission rates and types by product provider. This schedule is contained within each Financial Adviser’s personalised Disclosure Guide. A Financial Adviser will provide you with more information about commissions during the advice process.

Fees and Expenses

Generally, we do not charge you any fee for the advice and transactional solutions that we provide to you. This is possible because, on settlement of a mortgage or issuance of a risk insurance policy, we usually receive commission from the applicable product provider as described above. There are two exceptions to this general position which are explained below.

We may charge you a one-off fee in the following situations:

1. No commission: If you request that we provide services in relation to a product or service and we do not receive a commission. Any such fee would be agreed and authorised by you in writing before we complete the services and would be based on an estimate of the time spent providing the advice.
   This may arise in the rare event that you request that we provide Services in relation to either a product that is offered by a provider that we do not hold an accreditation with, or a product that is outside our usual arrangements with our product providers.
2. Repayment of commission: If a product or service provider requires that we repay commission within 27 months of settlement of your mortgage or issuance of your risk insurance policy. Any such fee would be no more than $2,500 (plus GST) and would be calculated based on a rate of $250 (plus GST) per hour of the financial adviser’s time spent providing services to you in connection with the applicable mortgage or insurance. The fee charged will not exceed the amount of commission clawed back from the lender.

Should we need to charge you a fee, you will be invoiced and will be given 30 days to make payment.

Conflicts of Interest

If there are any conflicts of interest apart from commission that could potentially influence the advice that we give, these will be shown in your Financial Adviser’s Disclosure Guide.

Complaints and Dispute Resolution

Your adviser will attempt to resolve any issue of dissatisfaction with you immediately.

If the matter cannot be resolved to your satisfaction, the adviser will escalate the complaint to his or her manager, notifying you accordingly. We will send you an acknowledgement of your complaint within five working days of your complaint being notified to us. This letter will provide you with our timeline to respond to you and the name of the manager who will be managing our response. The manager will investigate and contact you to try to resolve the complaint to your satisfaction. It is important that you provide this person with all relevant information.

We will provide you with a written update within 20 working days of receiving your complaint. If we are unable to provide a full response to you at that point, our letter will explain why we are not yet able to do so and tell you when we will next contact you.

40 working days after the receipt of your complaint we will issue a final resolution. If we need to continue our review past this point, we will explain to you the reason for the delay and the required timeframe to provide a full response. At this point, if you feel that the delay is unsatisfactory, you can redirect your complaint to our external dispute resolution service provider detailed below.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint

We expect that our response to you will have addressed the concerns you have raised. If you feel that your concerns have not been appropriately considered, we invite you to submit any further information for consideration.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint despite our best efforts, you can contact our external dispute resolution scheme, who provides a free and independent dispute resolution service.

The contact details for our external dispute resolution service provider are:

Financial Services Complaints Ltd (FSCL) Membership: Home Loan Specialists Ltd (8866)
Level 4, 101 Lambton Quay, Wellington 6011
0800 347 257 or (04) 472 3725
www.fscl.org.nz

This document was last updated: 24 August 2023