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Our Policies & Disclosures

Privacy Policy

As a business that collects and holds personal information about our clients, we must comply with Code Standard 5 of the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services and adhere to the Privacy Act 2020 and its principles.

We only use client information for the purposes that we collect it for, and we do not underestimate the importance of keeping personal information secure during the collection, use, or authorised disclosure when providing our services.

Our key obligations:

  • Ensuring all information is kept secure, whether physical or electronic, and can only be accessed by authorised people
  • Only collecting information that is needed to provide our services
  • Explaining what personal information will be used for when it is collected, and informing the client of their right to access or correct their information anytime they wish to
  • Only using personal information for those purposes that have been authorised by the client
  • Returning or securely disposing of client information once it is no longer needed
  • Reporting any data breach that may cause harm to the client/s to the Privacy Commissioner, affected individuals and the FMA.
  • Ensuring that all personal information that is collected is protected by safeguards that meet the requirements of New Zealand’s privacy laws, including all information that is transferred offshore


What is personal information?

The Privacy Commission provides the following definition on their website:

Personal information is any piece of information that relates to a living, identifiable human being. People’s names, contact details, financial health, purchase records: anything that you can look at and say, “this is about an identifiable person.”

It does not need to include the client name and does not need to be secret or sensitive in nature. It is any information that could be used to identify an individual.

The Process

1. Client Authorisation

When meeting a client for the first time, we discuss the services that we offer and explain the process followed when providing advice. This involves asking the client to complete a Personal Information Authority & Declaration that outlines:

  • The purpose for collecting the client’s personal information
  • What the information will be used for when providing the service
  • Permission to obtain information for assessing suitability of products and/or providers
  • Consent to send electronic marketing material
  • Authorisation to share the information with a third party for the purposes of quality assurance, complaint management or to meet regulatory obligations.
  • The clients right to access, review and correct any information that we hold about them

We do not provide any personal information, either verbal or written, without explicit consent from the client.

2. Office Security

  • Any time the office is unattended, it is locked. Access is granted via an electronic keypad with individual codes that are deleted when a staff member leaves the business.
  • All physical files containing personal or sensitive information are kept in drawers or cabinets with a lock and key.
  • When files are not being worked on, they are filed away so that there is no unauthorised access to a client’s personal information.
  • All computers, laptops and electronic devices as well as software programmes are password protected so that they can only be used by those that are permitted.
  • We only respond to emails or share information once we are able to verify that we are speaking with the client requesting the information.

3. Data Security

  • All electronic devices and software programmes are password protected.
  • We only use internet connectivity or emails where there is a secure WiFi network and an inability for others to access data.
  • We only use trusted third party service providers that abide by the Privacy Act 2020 and include assurances in their business agreement or contract.
  • Our business uses a Customer Relationship Management platform (CRM) provided by The Adviser Platform. Details of how The Adviser Platform fulfils their obligations under The Privacy Act 2020 are included in The Adviser Platform (TAP) Data Privacy & Protection Overview, available on their website.
  • Where laptops or electronic devices are unaccounted for, we update passwords for all applicable software programmes to prevent the chance of unauthorised access.
  • The CRM provided by The Adviser Platform only allows a user to be logged into a single device at any one time and all users are logged out after a period of inactivity.
  • X-plan. Password protected. Cloud based.
  • Omnimax – KiwiSaver & Investment advice. Cloud based, password protected.
  • IANZ – ibroker – As above.
  • Office 365


4. Use of Information

We only use information for the purposes it is intended and only after the client has given authorisation to do so. Their information may be used for the following purposes:

  • Determining suitability of products for the client’s needs
  • Applying for products supplied by one of our providers
  • Underwriting requests from providers when making an offer of terms
  • Submitting claims to a provider on the client’s behalf
  • Quality assurance purposes
  • Third party compliance services
  • Regulatory requests
  • Third party offerings that are necessary in the provision of our services to the client
  • Electronic marketing (where consent has been given) with the ability for the client to unsubscribe from further electronic marketing material

All personal information will be handed back to the client and/or destroyed once it is no longer required and at the client’s request. We require the information to be held on file for 7 years following the end of the client relationship.

5. Breach of Privacy

Where a breach of privacy is suspected, it is reviewed for potential harm to determine what immediate action needs to be taken to prevent any further breach.

If it is concluded that a breach of privacy has occurred, we notify the affected individuals of the breach and let them know how their privacy has been breached, what steps we are taking to limit the breach, and confirm that we will be reporting the breach to the Privacy Commissioner.

We then notify the Privacy Commissioner using the NotifyUs function on the website of the Privacy Commission:

https://www.privacy.org.nz/privacy-for-agencies/privacy-breaches/notify-us/

Where it is determined that there has been a breach of privacy or there was the potential for a breach to have occurred, it is recorded in our Incident & Breach Register and treated in line with our Material Issues and Reporting Policy.

How compliance is monitored

Dave Thomas is the nominated Privacy Officer and is responsible for understanding our responsibilities under the Privacy Act 2020.

We review all our advice files for accuracy and compliance with our obligations under this policy.

Related Documents

Personal Information Authority

The Adviser Platform (TAP) Data Privacy & Protection Overview

Policy Review

This policy is reviewed on an annual basis.

Please click here to download a copy of this privacy policy.

Disclosure

Legal Disclosure Information

Accelerate Consulting Ltd (Accelerate), FSP1003925, holds a financial advice provider licence issued by the Financial Markets Authority.

Duties

We believe in delivering the most appropriate advice, built upon our four core business pillars, Trust, Advice, Choice and Value.

We are bound by duties under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (Act),

We are required to:

  • Meet certain standards of competence, knowledge and skill, as set by the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services (Code of Conduct). These have been designed to ensure that we have the relevant expertise to provide you with advice.
  • Take reasonable steps to ensure that you understand the nature and scope of the advice we give you and let you know if there are any limitations on the advice we provide. This will help you ensure that the advice provided meets your goals and objectives.
  • Give priority to your interest, by taking all reasonable steps to make sure our advice isn’t materially influenced by our own interests.
  • Exercise a prudent level of care, diligence and skill.
  • Meet certain standards of ethical behaviour, conduct and client care as required by the Code of Conduct. These are designed to ensure that we treat you as we should and give you suitable advice.
  • Not offer or recommend a financial product that contravenes the Act or related regulations. This gives you peace of mind that the products we recommend are compliant with relevant laws.
  • Make certain disclosure information available to you, at certain times, for example when advice is provided. We must not provide false, misleading or incomplete information. You can access the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services here.

Nature and Scope of Advice

Accelerate provides advice to our clients about their life, health, disability and general insurance needs together with KiwiSaver and Investment planning.

Our financial advisers provide financial advice in relation to the following financial products

General Insurance Products

  • Domestic general insurance, such as house, contents, landlords, motor vehicle and boat insurance, as well as commercial general insurance, such as commercial property, business interruption, commercial motor, marine, liability, professional indemnity and cyber insurance.

Financial Service Products

  • We advise on a variety of financial products, including personal and group insurance (such as life cover, disability, income protection, and trauma coverage), KiwiSaver investments, managed investments, and life investment products like Whole of Life and Endowment policies.
  • When providing our advice, we access a wide range of products from various insurance and investment providers in both the local and overseas market.

Fees, expenses, or other amounts payable

  • We apply fees to insurance placed in regard to Fire and General insurance. This is for such things as Car, House, and Contents, Professional Indemnity, Public Liability, etc.
  • The fees for placing your Fire and General insurance are variable per client based on the products chosen and advice given. These fees will be made clear to you when advice is given.
  • We may apply a fee for Investment or Retirement Planning advice. The fees are variable per client based on their individual requirements. These fees will be made clear to you as part of our Scope of Service for you to approve before we commence work.
  • No fee is charged regarding the placement of Life products, such as Life, Disability, and Health. Although we will charge a fee of $500.00 to you should you cancel any Life or Health Insurance in the two years following it being established for you. This compensates us for loss of income as Life and Health companies will claw back commissions payable to Accelerate for any policies cancelled within 24 months of being established.

Conflicts of interest and commissions or other incentives

Accelerate may pay your financial adviser a salary, plus bonuses and other incentives.

General Insurance

  • Accelerate may receive a commission when you pay your invoice for insurance cover or if we refer you to a premium funder with whom you enter into a premium funding arrangement.
  • Accelerate may pay your financial adviser a salary, plus bonuses and other incentives. Accelerate and your financial adviser may receive indirect benefits from insurers and premium funders such as business lunches, tickets to sporting and/or cultural events or corporate promotional merchandise.

Financial Services

  • Accelerate will receive commissions if you choose to follow the advice given by one of our Advisers and take out insurance. The amount of commission is based on the amount of the premium.
  • Accelerate will receive Fees or Asset Under Management Commissions (“AUM”) from KiwiSaver and Investment Providers. The fee or AUM is based on the sum invested.
  • More detail on the commission, fee or AUM that Accelerate will receive will be provided at the time of our advice.

On occasion, an Insurer or KiwiSaver Provider may do such things as, sponsor training events or Conferences we may attend, bring morning tea, send a hamper at Christmas, or take us out for a meal, we see these less as a conflict of interest and more as relationship-building so that we can liaise better between our clients and the Insurers that we work with.

Steps we take to manage the above described potential conflicts:

  • We have access to a range of Insurers, KiwiSaver and Investment Providers.
  • We use third-party product research as part of our analysis where available.
  • We have our Advice Processes independently audited.
  • We pay our advisers salaries

Providers we work with (Accelerate’s Approved Product List “APL”)

General Insurance

Accelerate is proud to be a Member Broker of Insurance Advisernet New Zealand, a network of more than 200 advisers across New Zealand and Australia. Insurance Advisernet is a principal member of the Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand Inc. and the largest member of the publicly listed AUB Group – one of the leading general broking groups in Australasia with over 450,000 clients. This relationship gives us access to unrivalled financial strength, business efficiencies and buying power that spans every major insurer in New Zealand and Australia, even access to major overseas insurers when required.

Financial Services

We undertake a review of the Financial Services Providers we work with each year and authorise our Advisers to work with a select group of Life and Health Insurers, Kiwisaver and Investment Providers. We do not work with every Provider but select those with which we have the most confidence based on our experience with them and our own inhouse research.

Your Adviser can disclose more details about our current Approved Product List before commencing work with you.

What to do if you are not satisfied?

How to make a complaint.

If you have a problem, concern, or complaint about any part of our service, please let us know so that we can work with you to try to fix the problem.

This is very important to us, please do not feel afraid to speak up, some of the best changes come from a complaint or suggestion from a client. Our complaints process aims to address your concerns.

Step 1 – Let’s sort it out. Discuss your complaint with the person you’ve been dealing with and try to resolve it.

Step 2 – If your complaint is not resolved by Step 1, you contact our Complaints Team to arrange to meet with them, or if you prefer you can email or phone explaining the nature of your complaint and how you would like it resolved.

You may contact the internal complaints scheme by:

Contact Name: Dave Thomas or Scott Campbell
Address: P.O. Box 317012 Hobsonville Auckland 0664
Telephone number: 09 524 0450
Email address: dave@aib.nz or scott@aib.nz

We will review your complaint and come back to you in writing.

Step 3 – Taking your complaint further

We are a Participant of the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman (“IFSO”) complaints scheme.

You can refer your complaint to the IFSO Scheme if it has not been resolved after going through our complaints process. This is a free, independent dispute resolution service that will consider your complaint and, either reach an agreed outcome or make a decision.

Freephone: 0800 888 202
Telephone: 04 499 7612

Office hours are 8.30am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday.
Email: info@ifso.nz

Post:
Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme
PO Box 10-845
Wellington 6143

Physical:
Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme
Level 2, Solnet House
70 The Terrace
Wellington 6143

Please click here to download a copy of this disclosure document.

Complaints

If you have a problem, concern, or complaint about any part of our service, please tell our internal complaints scheme so that our internal complaints scheme can try to fix the problem.

You may contact the internal complaints scheme by:

Contact Name: Dave Thomas and Scott Campbell
Address: P.O. Box 317012 Hobsonville Auckland 0664
Telephone number: 09 524 0450
Email address: dave@aib.nz
scott@aib.nz

We would welcome the opportunity to rectify any concerns that you might have, but please be advised that you may contact the above if you feel in any way that we have let you down.

If we cannot agree on how to fix the issue, or if you decide not to use the internal complaints scheme, you can contact the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman. This service will cost you nothing, and will help us resolve any disagreements.

You can contact the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme at:

Address:
Solnet House Lvl 2/ 70 The Terrace,
Wellington Central, Wellington 6011

Telephone number: 0800 888 202

Email address: info@ifso.nz

09 524 0454