This document provides you with information relating to our activities and those of our Credit Representatives. It contains information about various fees and charges that may be payable by you to us, as well as about certain commissions we may receive from a Licensee when we are acting as a Credit Representative, or we pay to certain third parties. It also contains information about what you should do if you have a complaint or dispute in connection with our services as a Credit Representative.
A ‘Credit Representative’ is a person who has been authorised by a Credit Licensee to engage in specified credit activities on behalf of the Licensee.
Before we provide Credit Assistance to you, we assess whether the particular loan or lease is suitable for you. To do this, we need to make reasonable inquiries and verify:
We won’t be able to provide you Credit Assistance if our assessment shows:
We act as a Credit Representative for our Licensee. We are authorised to engage in credit activities including providing Credit Assistance on its behalf. Subject to meeting credit criteria, we are able to assist you with obtaining loans and leases from a broad range of lenders and lessors through our Licensee. Our Licensee does not require us to recommend any particular lender and does not set any quotas or obligations on us relating to recommending any particular lender.
The following are the lenders or lessors with whom we generally conduct the most business:
We may receive remuneration from our Licensee and do not charge you any fees or charges in relation to acting as a Credit Representative.
You may have to pay other fees and charges (such as an application fees, valuation fees and other fees) to the lender, lessor or other parties. You should review the disclosure documents and your loan contract or lease for further details of any such fees and charges.
We obtain mortgage aggregation services from our Licensee. Our Licensee provides services at arm’s-length to our business which include IT systems, loan information and lodgement systems, training and development, commission processing, conferences and professional development events, and assistance with regulatory and compliance obligations. In consideration of the services our Licensee gives us, we pay fees to our Licensee and our Licensee retains some of the commission panel lenders pay on loans we arrange.
We may charge a fee for providing Credit Assistance. More details about those fees will be set out in a written quote we will give you before we provide Credit Assistance.
Our Licensee receives commission from lenders and lessors and pay us commission in relation to the loan contracts or leases for which we act as a Credit Representative and provide Credit Assistance. The total amount of commission we may receive in relation to your loan or lease will vary depending on the lender or lessor, the term, the features, the amount of the loan or lease you choose and the amount and timing of the repayments you make.
Loan Contracts such as Home Loan, Investment Property Loans and Personal Loans
Upfront commission payable by lenders in relation to home loans and investment property loans is calculated as a percentage of the loan amount and is generally in the range of 0% to 1.5% of the loan amount. It is usually paid after settlement of the loan.
Trail commission payable by lenders in relation to home loans and investment property loans is generally calculated regularly (monthly, quarterly, bi-monthly or annually) on the outstanding loan balance and is paid in arrears. The trail commission payable by lenders is generally in the range of 0% to 0.5% per annum of the outstanding loan amount.
Personal Loans
Upfront commission payable by lenders in relation to personal loans is calculated as a percentage of the loan amount and is generally in the range of 1% to 2% of the loan amount. It is usually paid after settlement of the loan. Trail commission is generally not payable in relation to personal loans.
Further details of the commission earned by us will be included in the Credit Proposal Disclosure Document we provide you at the same time as we provide you with Credit Assistance. You can request information from us about the fees that we are likely to receive, how those fees are calculated, and our reasonable estimate of the fees or commissions that will be payable.
Leases
Upfront commission payable by the lessor in relation to leases is calculated as a percentage of the lease amount and is generally in the range of 0% to 5% of the lease amount. It is usually paid after settlement of the lease. Trail commission is generally not payable in relation to leases.
Further details of the commission earned by us will be included in the Credit Proposal Disclosure Document we provide you at the same time as we provide you with Credit Assistance. You can request information from us about the fees that we are likely to receive, how those fees are calculated, and our reasonable estimate of the fees or commission that will be payable.
From time to time we or our Licensee may receive a benefit, directly by way of cash bonus or additional commissions or indirectly by way of training, professional development days or sponsorship, if we or our Licensee write a particular volume of loans offered by those lenders.
If a third party has introduced you to us or referred you to us, we may pay them a commission or a fee. More detail about those payments will be set out in the Credit Proposal Disclosure Document we will give to you before we provide you with Credit Assistance.
We may obtain referrals from a range of sources, including real estate agents, accountants, financial planners or other people.
Further information about referral commissions, including our reasonable estimate of the amount of any commission payable and how it is calculated is available from us on request and will be included in the credit proposal disclosure we will supply to you when we provide you with our Credit Assistance.
We are committed to providing our clients with the best possible service. If at any time we have not met our obligations – or you have a complaint about any of our services – please inform us so we can work towards a resolution. We will endeavour to deal with your complaint promptly, thoroughly and fairly.
If your complaint relates to a product or service acquired through a third party (for example, a lender) we may ask you to contact the relevant third party. They will deal with your complaint under their complaints resolution process.
If you are not satisfied with the resolution of your complaint by the third party under their complaints resolution process, you are entitled to have your dispute considered by their External Dispute Resolution Scheme. Please contact the third party for further details.
Our Complaints Area will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within five business days. If unable to resolve the complaint/dispute to your satisfaction within five business days, they will write to you advising the procedures we will follow in investigating and handling your complaint.
Within 45 calendar days from the date you lodged the complaint with us, we will write to you advising you the outcome of the investigation and the reason/s for our decision, or if required, we will inform you if more time is needed to complete the investigation.
If you do not think we have resolved your complaint to your satisfaction, you may take the matter – free of charge – to the relevant External Disputes Resolution Scheme (provided it is within the scheme’s terms of reference) as detailed below. You may also refer the matter to the relevant External Disputes Resolution Scheme at any time, but if our internal process is still in progress, they may request that our internal processes be complete before considering the matter further.
Our external dispute resolution service provider is the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), which can be contacted via:
Australian Financial Complaints Authority
GPO Box 3, Melbourne VIC 3001
1800 931 678 | info@afca.org.au | www.afca.org.au
We need to collect personal information about you to provide you with our broking & related services. This privacy statement tells you how we collect your information, what we use the information for and who we share the information with. If we collect information that can be used to identify you, we will take reasonable steps to notify you of that collection.
We will collect your information from you directly whenever we can, like from enquiries we make of you when you seek Credit Assistance from us. We may verify that information from sources referred to in the responses to those enquiries or in this privacy statement.
Sometimes we will collect information about you from other sources as the Privacy Act 1988 permits. We will do this only if it’s reasonably necessary to do so, for example, where:
Some law may require us to collect personal information about you. For example, we may require your information to verify your identity under Australian Anti-Money Laundering law.
We may use your information for purposes including:
You can let us know at any time if you no longer wish to receive direct marketing offers from us. We will process your request as soon as practicable.
If you don’t provide your information to us, it may not be possible to:
General
We may use and share your information with other organisations for any purpose described above.
Sharing with your representatives and referees
Sharing with third parties
We may share your information with third parties in relation to services we provide to you or goods or services in which we reasonably consider you may be interested, including:
Sharing outside of Australia
We are not likely to disclose your information to organisations overseas. However, we may store your information in cloud or other types of networked or electronic storage. As electronic or networked storage can be accessed from various countries via an internet connection, it’s not always practicable to know in which country your information may be held.
You can find out more about how we manage your information by reading our Privacy Policy available by contacting us. Please see our contact details above. (Also, you can read and obtain a copy of that policy at our website address set out above.) Our Privacy Policy sets out how you can ask us to access and seek to correct information we hold about you and how you may complain against us about a privacy issue.
If you give information to us about another person (like your co-applicant) in relation to the services we provide, you will let that other person know that:
Updated: January 2020