The financial services are provided by Lifespan and your adviser. Lifespan’s Australian Financial Service Licence and contact details are stated on the last page.

• who Lifespan and your adviser are;
• how we can be contacted;
• how Lifespan and your adviser are paid;
• what services we are authorized to provide to you;
• details of any potential conflicts of interests;
• details of our dispute resolution procedures and how you can access them

You should also be aware that you must receive a Statement of Advice (SOA) and Product Disclosure Statements when personal advice involving a financial product is provided to you, i.e. advice that takes into consideration your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. The Statement of Advice will contain the advice, the basis on which it is given which may have influenced the advice. If your adviser provides further advice to you, but not in writing, and that further advice is related to the advice provided in a previous Statement of Advice, that further advice will be recorded in a Record of Advice (ROA). You may request an ROA from your adviser or Lifespan up to seven years after the further advice was provided at no additional cost. In the event we make a recommendation to acquire a particular financial product (other than securities), we must also provide you with a Product Disclosure Statement containing information about the particular product that will enable you to make an informed decision.

Your adviser acts on behalf of Lifespan who is responsible for the advice given to you. However, your adviser may operate separate businesses which do NOT involve Lifespan in any way, such as: accounting; auditing; tax return preparation; self-managed super fund compliance and administration; property sales and referrals; and other products and activities. Therefore, Lifespan is NOT responsible for advice and work associated with products and services where your adviser is not acting as an authorized representative of Lifespan. If you are uncertain you should ask either your adviser or Lifespan Head Office who is responsible for that particular advice or transaction.

Lifespan is a holder of an Australian Financial Services Licence which enables it to act as a financial services provider under the Corporations Act. Lifespan was established in August 1994 and is privately owned by the family interests of the Executive Chairman, John Ardino who has over 30 years experience in financial planning. Lifespan is a Professional Partner of the Financial Planning Association of Australia Ltd, and abides by their Code of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct. Lifespan provides a wide range of services to a large network of representatives across Australia to enable them to provide sound advice.

These services include: compliance; supervision; investment research and advice; ongoing professional development and training; an adviser help desk across all financial planning issues and general technical support and advice.

Lifespan and Omniport Ltd have the same shareholders. Omniport Ltd is an unlisted public company, which is the promoter of the Omniport Wrap Service and the Wealthguard Portfolio Service.

The Omniport Wrap Service is issued by Avanteos Investments Ltd. The transactional, administrative and custodial systems underlying the Omniport Wrap Service are provided by Avanteos Investments Ltd, a company fully owned by the Commonwealth Bank. Lifespan has no ownership connections with any other financial product issuers.

The Wealthguard Portfolio Service is issued and administered by HUB24 Custodial Services Limited who provides the underlying transactional, administrative and custodial systems.

If appropriate for your needs and objectives, your adviser may recommend the Omniport and Wealthguard products to you.

Financial planning basically involves determining your current situation; establishing your realistic and reasonable goals and needs including your risk profile; and exploring the costs and benefits, potential risks and returns, advantages and disadvantages of the various options reasonably available to you to reach those goals within the limits of relevant laws and available solutions. A course of action is recommended, selected and implemented. The results are periodically reviewed in the light of changes in investment markets, legislation and your own circumstances, needs and goals.

Unless their authorization is restricted (see the Adviser Profile) Lifespan advisers can generally provide you with sound advice relating to a wide range of important areas such as wealth creation, retirement, redundancy, superannuation, risk insurance, estate planning, Centrelink payments, cashflow management, budgeting and debt repayments, structuring of investment portfolios, borrowing to invest, complex company and trust structures, and so on. Lifespan’s research and technical support services enables advisers to provide value added advice on a broad spectrum of financial problems which takes into account relevant regulations pertaining to your situation and goals.

Lifespan is licensed to deal in and provide financial advice on the following range of financial products: Deposit and payment products, standard margin lending, managed investment schemes including Investor Directed Portfolio Services and Managed Discretionary Accounts, securities including           shares, Retirement Savings Accounts, superannuation, life insurance investment and risk products and government issued debentures, stocks and bonds.

Lifespan advisers act on your instructions following your acceptance of their advice in the Statement of Advice. They and we should not act independently of your specific instructions (unless you decide to use Lifespan’s managed discretionary account service). Any special instructions you provide should be communicated to your adviser in writing. These instructions should be forwarded in an email, fax or posted letter to your adviser.

Lifespan advisers usually provide advice tailored to your individual circumstances and generally have the capacity of implementing the advice they give, except where this may require the use of other professionals (accountants and lawyers). You may choose to enter into an agreement with your adviser to provide you with both initial advice and ongoing advice. If appropriate, we may also provide general advice only, where you are ultimately responsible for ensuring that this advice is suitable to your particular needs, personal circumstances and financial situation. In this case, you should also obtain any related product disclosure statements to assist in this purpose.

Lifespan does not allow representatives to receive your investment funds into their own accounts or into any Lifespan trust account. You should at all times only transfer funds for financial products to those approved financial institutions recommended by your adviser (as specified in the Product Disclosure Statement or similar document), and never to any entity or person other than those institutions.

You should also not sign any blank forms; appoint your adviser as your attorney or authorized signatory without the written approval of Lifespan; or appoint any other person as your attorney or authorized signatory unless you have received legal advice.

You will need to provide us with your current personal and financial situation such as details of assets, liabilities, income and expenses and personal objectives. This can best be accomplished by completing a Lifespan Client Data Form. The amount and type of information we will require from you depends on what financial services you require.

If you choose not to supply the required information, the advice you receive may not be appropriate to your needs, objectives and financial situation. You should read the warnings contained in the Statement of Advice carefully before making any decision relating to this limited advice and obtain any related product disclosure statements to assist you.

Your adviser’s specific method of remuneration and fees, including referral fees are detailed in their Adviser Profile. The exact details will be disclosed to you in an invoice or in the SOA.

All fees will need to be payable to Lifespan. If the adviser’s remuneration includes commission paid by the product provider, such commission payment will be made to Lifespan. Lifespan pays 60% or more of all commissions and fees to your Adviser depending upon their total revenue.

The three stages of financial planning are Initial Advice, Implementation and Ongoing Reviews. There is usually a separate fee for each of the three stages. Your adviser’s remuneration structure for each advice stage will be found in their Adviser Profile and the dollar value disclosed to you in the SOA.

All commissions are payments made by the insurance product provider and are calculated as a percentage of the premium paid on insurance products. Commissions are of two types: (a) upfront or initial; and (b) ongoing or trail.

Fees can be based on either: a percentage of funds invested or funds under advice, or hourly rates multiplied by the hours worked, or an agreed dollar amount for the value of the specific service being performed, or a combination of these.

The typical ranges of commission and fee rates for investments and insurance products are as follows.

Upfront fees can vary between nil and 5.5% on investment products. Example: $100,000 invested in a wrap service may involve an upfront fee payment of say 3% or $3,000 which could be deducted from your investment account and paid to Lifespan leaving a net investment of $97,000.

Ongoing fees can be collected by platforms and other product providers and the percentage based fees can be up to 2% pa but normally in the range of 0.5% to 1.5% pa depending on the size of the portfolio. Example: A portfolio of $300,000 may be subject to an ongoing portfolio review fee of 1% per annum paid quarterly. This would amount to $3,000 per annum.

Upfront commissions can be up to 66% of the premium paid on insurance products.

Ongoing commissions can be up to 33%.

The precise amount of all these commissions and any other fees charged is provided in your Statement of Advice.

Lifespan has negotiated or will negotiate volume based and other additional volume based payments with several fund managers and platform providers including Omniport, and also with risk insurance providers. These volume based payments are sometimes referred to as rebates or platform margins or other names. Volume based payments on various wholesale and retail managed funds and platforms range from 0.05% pa of funds under advice (FUA) to potentially 0.30% pa of FUA. These percentages may vary from year to year. Additional volume-based risk insurance commissions may range from 10% to 40% of the premiums paid. A share of this volume based commission currently ranging from nil to 60% may be payable to your adviser.

This share may vary from year to year and is dependent upon Lifespan’s gross profit from your adviser’s activities and other criteria. All relevant details of Lifespan’s additional commissions on any financial products and the share your adviser receives will be fully disclosed in your Statement of Advice.

Please note that the ranges of all commission percentages referred to in this document may vary up or down at any time. The actual amounts relevant to you are provided in your SOA.

Lifespan advisers may only recommend to you investment products that are researched, analysed and approved by Lifespan. Your adviser should explain any significant risks of investments and financial planning strategies. If the adviser does not do so, you should contact us to explain those risks to you.

If you have a complaint about the service provided to you, you should take the following steps:

Contact your adviser and tell your adviser about your complaint;

If your complaint is not satisfactorily resolved within 3 business days, please contact The Compliance Manager, by telephone on (02) 9252 2000 or, in writing, at Level 23, 25 Bligh Street, Sydney NSW 2000. We will try to resolve your complaint quickly and fairly;

If you still do not receive a satisfactory outcome, you have the right to complain to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) on line at www.afca.org.au or on the free call number – 1800 931 678. Lifespan is a member of this dispute resolution service.

Alternatively, you may contact the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) on their Customer Contact Centre on 1300 300 630 which you may use to make a complaint and obtain information about your rights.

Lifespan holds Professional Indemnity Insurance that complies with the compensation arrangements under Section 912B of the Corporations Act. The Professional Indemnity Insurance policy we hold covers the financial services provided by Lifespan’s past and present representatives subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions of the policy wording. This insurance is not intended to cover product failure or general investment losses. Lifespan’s policy covers loss or damage suffered by retail clients due to breaches of its obligations under Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act by the licensee and its representatives. This includes negligent, fraudulent or dishonest conduct.

As a provider of financial services, we are subject to certain legislative and regulatory requirements, which necessitate us obtaining and holding detailed information, which personally identifies you and/or contains information or an opinion about you. In addition, our ability to provide you with a financial planning and advice service is dependent on us obtaining certain personal information about you.

We will collect information either directly from you or on your authority make investigations with others to obtain the information e.g. other professional advisers, accountant, superannuation fund, insurance and investment providers, etc.,

The primary purpose for the collection, maintenance and use of your personal information is to adequately provide to you the services you have requested.

If you do not disclose the information then the services may not be provided to you adequately or at all.

We maintain a record of your personal profile including details of your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. We also maintain records of any recommendations made to you. We are committed to implementing and promoting a privacy policy, which will ensure the privacy and security of your personal information. If you wish to examine your file please ask us. We will make arrangements for you to do so.

Our business is governed by legislation protecting your personal information, including the Privacy Act 1988 and Australian Privacy Principals (APPs) Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012 which replaced the National Privacy Principles established under the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000. Our privacy policy is available on our website or on request from us direct as detailed below.