Financial Services Guide – Craig Smith

The purpose of this Financial Services Guide (FSG) is to assist you in deciding whether to use any of our services by providing you with important information about the types of services we provide, how we and other relevant persons are remunerated, our interests and associations, and details about your rights should you have a complaint about the advice or services we have provided to you.

It is important that you read and understand this FSG. Should you have any questions please contact us directly to discuss them.

Where we provide you with a financial service, you may receive a Statement of Advice (SoA) or Record of Further Advice (RoFA) from us, which sets out our personal advice to you. You may also receive a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) which sets out information about a financial product you can acquire. These documents are explained in more detail in the following pages.

In this document any reference to “the licensee” or “we” or “us” or “our” means Accru Wealth Management Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) number 238520. Reference to “financial adviser” means a representative of Accru Wealth Management Pty Ltd.

Accru Wealth Management Pty Ltd and its Authorised Representatives receive commission from retail insurance products (including Life, Total and Permanent Disability, Trauma and income protection insurance) held by clients. Accru Wealth Management Pty Ltd and its Authorised Representatives provide insurance advice, application assistance, annual reviews and claims management to clients in exchange for receiving commissions from their retail insurance product providers.

As a result, we are neither independent, impartial, or unbiased as defined in Section 923A of the Corporations Act.

As the holder of an AFSL, Accru Wealth Management is responsible for the financial services we provide to you. Accru Wealth Management acts on its own behalf when these financial services are provided to you. In relation to the financial services offered in this FSG, Accru Wealth Management, as the holder of an AFSL, does not act on behalf of any other person or licensee. Accru Wealth Management is only responsible for the services offered in this FSG.

The law requires Accru Wealth Management to have arrangements in place to compensate certain persons for loss or damage they suffer from certain breaches of the Corporations Act by Accru Wealth Management and its Authorised Representatives. Accru Wealth Management has internal compensation arrangements as well as professional indemnity insurance that satisfy these requirements.

Accru Wealth Management Pty Ltd (Accru Wealth Management) is a privately-owned company and the holder of an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) issued by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

Accru Wealth Management is the wealth management division of Accru Melbourne Pty Ltd, located at 50 Camberwell Road, Hawthorn East, Victoria 3123. Our full contact details are provided on the front page of this FSG.

The financial services described in this FSG are provided by your Financial Adviser as an Authorised Representative of Accru Wealth Management. The advice and services our financial advisers are authorised to provide may differ, according to individual areas of expertise, training and focus of their roles.

Our AFSL permits us to deal, and provide financial product advice, in the following areas:

Some of the services you are able to access through Accru Wealth Management include:

Not all of our financial advisers can advise on every one of these areas, and some may be restricted to providing advice and services in only some of the above areas.

Additionally, our advisers are all registered to provide Tax (Financial) Advice services. Based on the information collected from you, your adviser will consider the tax consequences of the financial advice they provide. However, this financial advice will not include a full assessment of your overall tax position or your tax liabilities and obligations. You should seek specialist tax advice from your accountant in these instances.

Services that cannot be provided under our AFSL include:

You should rely only on the financial services described in this FSG.

We have developed our own approach to researching financial products that may be suitable for our clients; only those products which have been assessed and supported by external research become part of our approved product list (APL). This list is extensive and incorporates a range of third-party fund managers and life companies. A copy can be provided to you at any time upon request.

When providing personal advice, a reasonable investigation will be conducted to recommend products that are appropriate and in your best interests based on your individual circumstances, goals and objectives. In some instances this may involve investigating and recommending products which are not on our approved product list.

Your financial adviser will be Craig Smith (ASIC financial adviser number 1241626), an Authorised Representative of Accru Wealth Management.

Craig has completed a Graduate Diploma of Financial Planning (through Kaplan Professional); he also has a Bachelor of Business, majoring in Finance and Management (Swinburne).

Craig can provide advice and services in all of the areas covered by the AFSL, excluding standard margin lending facilities.

As an employee, Craig receives a salary, and may also be eligible to receive a bonus depending upon performance across several KPIs.

We need full details of your personal objectives and needs, your current financial situation and any other information that is relevant to your reasons for seeking our advice. If you provide us with either incomplete or inaccurate information, the advice you receive may not be appropriate, and you would need to assess this, and accept the consequences for your own actions in light of your true circumstances.

As a business operating in Australia, we are required to adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Privacy Act), which regulate the collection, storage, use, and disclosure of personal and sensitive information. Information about how we comply with the APPs can be found in the Privacy Policy available on our website.

Personal advice will be provided in writing, in a document called a Statement of Advice (SoA), or Financial Plan. This document sets out your personal circumstances and your needs and objectives and then explains the resulting strategy and recommendations. The SoA will also, among other things, tell you about:

If there has not been a significant change to your personal circumstances any further advice may be provided to you in a Record of Further Advice (RoFA). A copy of the RoFA will be issued to you at the time the further advice is provided. You can request a copy of a RoFA by contacting us using any of the contact details on page 1 of this FSG – this is applicable up to 7 years after the advice was provided to you.

Where our advice recommends a financial product, we will provide you with a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS). The purpose of a PDS is to assist you to make an informed decision about whether to acquire the financial product, as it contains a description of the product features, risks and benefits, and information about your cooling-off rights (if applicable). You should read and understand the PDS prior to making a decision about any product. If you have any questions, these should be raised with your financial adviser.

There may be circumstances where we provide advice that is not based upon your own personal circumstances, needs and objectives. This may be treated as General Advice, and you need to consider its appropriateness in light of your personal circumstances before acting on the advice. Information about any fees or remuneration applicable to the General Advice can be requested by you. If any particular product is mentioned, a copy of its PDS should be obtained by you and considered by you before making any decision.

If you instruct us to arrange a transaction without obtaining our advice, we may be able to deal in or arrange those products by carrying out your instructions on an execution-only basis. If you do not obtain advice, you face the risk that the financial product you select will not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and we are not liable for any losses that are incurred from carrying out your instructions on the basis the financial product was not appropriate, or where you have declined to act in accordance with our advice.

You may instruct us by telephone, in writing, or email using the contact details on page 1 of this document. We may not act upon written or email instructions without verbal confirmation. Similarly, we may write to you confirming the substance of a verbal instruction prior to taking action.

If we execute your transactional instructions in instances where you have declined the offer of personal advice or otherwise not received it, we will not act on the instructions unless you sign a letter confirming the instruction was execution-only in that it was provided without our personal advice.

However, for your own protection you should never:

We will never send you a direct link to transfer funds in the body of an email. It is common for scammers to impersonate financial institutions and intermediaries such as financial advisers to obtain access to your money, for instance by providing fraudulent email instructions to transfer funds into an incorrect account. Please contact us immediately if you ever wish to verify the authenticity of an email you receive purporting to be from a product issuer or from us.

Accru Wealth Management is wholly owned by the Directors of Accru Melbourne Pty Ltd.

Some product providers pay a licensee commission to Accru Wealth Management based on the insurance premiums paid for their insurance products.

Accru Wealth Management have an extensive network of business contacts and affiliates who can provide specialist services that are not part of the core licensed financial services offered by Accru Wealth Management and its financial advisers, however can be accessed or facilitated by your financial adviser. We do not pay, nor receive, referral fees if you use any of these providers. These services can include:

While we may provide these other services; you should understand that these services are not provided under Accru Wealth Management’s AFSL. Accru Wealth Management does not train, support or supervise the provision of these other services and has no responsibility in relation to those services (except for loan financing which is provided under Accru Wealth Management’s Australian Credit Licence (ASIC No 238520) who are under separate arrangements explained in Accru Wealth Managements separate Credit Guide.

We may receive small benefits like entertainment or hospitality from certain product providers at no additional cost to you. Accru Wealth Management keeps a register to record benefits valued up to $300. A copy of this register can be provided upon request.

Generally, our remuneration takes the form of:

Details of any fees, commissions or other benefits that we, Accru Wealth Management or other associated persons are entitled to receive if you implement our recommendations in relation to a specific financial product, will be disclosed to you in your SoA or RoFA when personal advice is provided to you.

The types of fees that may be received by Accru Wealth Management include the following:

Service fees

We will discuss and agree our fee structure with you before we provide you with services. The types of fees you can be charged are listed below. You may be charged a combination, or part of, any of these fees.

Fees for advice

We may charge fees for the preparation, presentation and implementation of our advice. These fees will be based on your individual circumstances, the complexity involved in your situation and the time it takes to prepare the financial advice for you. We will discuss these fees with you and gain your agreement to the fees before we provide you with the advice.

Ongoing advice fees

We may charge a fee for providing ongoing advice and services to you. This fee will be agreed with you and is either a set amount, or an amount based on the amount of funds under our advice, and/or the time involved in reviewing your portfolio and circumstances.

Payment methods

Our fees are either deducted from your investments directly or invoiced to you directly, or a combination of these methods.

Where it is debited from your investments it is normally referred to as an Ongoing Advice Fee.

In most instances you will be able to select the method of payment that suits you best. We will discuss and agree the method of payment with you before we provide you with services.

Do we receive commissions?

Initial and ongoing commissions from insurance providers may be received by us. These commissions are paid to us by the insurance company if you acquire the cover we recommend. The value of the commissions are included in the cost of what you pay for the insurance and are not an additional cost to you. The commissions we receive will be disclosed in your Statement of Advice with our recommendations and we will obtain your consent to be paid the commission as part of your Authority to Proceed with the advice. In some circumstances, these may be used to offset the cost of our advice fees.

The initial commission is paid at the commencement of the insurance policy by the product issuer to us. Ongoing commissions are payments paid by product issuers to us after the commencement of the insurance policy.

If you initiate an increase to your cover (resulting in an increase in the cost of premium payable by you to the insurance company), we may receive a further initial commission and an increase in the receipt of ongoing commissions on the value of the annual increase to your policy cost.

We may also receive selling commissions when our clients participate in initial public offerings (IPO) or secondary capital raisings. However, these selling commissions or fees are disclosed and fully rebated to clients who participate and pay Accru Wealth Management an Ongoing Advice Fee. When advice is provided regarding these IPOs or secondary capital raisings, you can request further particulars about any commissions concerned.

Upfront Commissions

Policies in place prior to 1 January 2020 – Upfront commission of up to 140% on the first years premium, and ongoing commission of up to 38.5% on the renewal premium.

Policies put into place after 1 January 2020 – Upfront commission of up to 66% on the first year’s premium, and ongoing commission of up to 27.5% on the renewal premium.

Example

We recommend you put into place an insurance policy on 1/02/23 and the premium is $2000. we would receive 66% or $1,320 of the first years premium as an upfront commission, and 22% or $440 of the renewal premium assuming it remains unchanged each year.

We have arrangements in place to maintain adequate professional indemnity insurance as required by s912B of the Corporations Act 2001. This insurance provides cover for claims made against us and our financial advisers, including claims in relation to the conduct of financial advisers who no longer work for us but who did so at the time of the relevant conduct.

If you have a complaint or concern about the service provided to you, we encourage you to take the following steps: