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This Financial
Services Guide (FSG) has been
designed to assist you in deciding
whether to use any of the services
we provide. The
guide contains important information
about:
-
the services
we offer you
-
how we and
others are paid
-
any potential
conflict of interest we may have
-
our internal
and external dispute resolution
procedures and how you can
access them
-
your rights
as a client
This FSG applies
from 10th May 2006 and remains valid
unless a further FSG is issued to
replace it. We may give you a
supplementary FSG for services not
covered under this FSG.
About Us
Capital Mutual
Insurance Brokers holds an
Australian Financial Services
Licence No 245378 under the
Corporations Act 2001 to provide
General Insurance Broking Services.
We trade under the names of Capital
Mutual Insurance Brokers and
Shopping Centre Business Services.
We are a member of the National
Insurance Brokers Association &
Steadfast Group Limited. We have
been servicing our clients since
1990.
Capital Mutual
Insurance Brokers is responsible for
financial services that will be
provided to you, or through you to
family members, including the
distribution of this FSG.
Who do we act
for?
As an insurance
broker we act for you. However, in
some circumstances we may enter into
an agreement with an insurer to
arrange insurance policies on their
behalf and not on your behalf. If we
are given a binding authority from
the insurer, this means we can enter
into insurance policies and/or
handle or settle claims on their
behalf. We will inform you when we
act for the insurer and not for you.
Our Services
We are able to
provide financial product advice and
deal in general insurance products
in order to protect your assets and
meet your particular needs. The
general insurance products we can
assist you with are varied and
includes home and motor insurance,
business insurance, construction,
liability, professional indemnity,
directors & officers, tax audit and
travel insurance.
To enable us to
provide you with suitable advice
applicable to your circumstances, we
will need you to provide us with
complete information about the
risk(s) to be insured, your
situation, your needs, your current
financial position and objectives.
You also need to advise us of any
relevant changes as they occur. We
will ask you for the details we need
to know.
In some cases we
will not ask for any of this
information. If we do not ask or if
you're unable or choose not to
provide some information to us, this
may limit our ability to make
appropriate recommendations and you
will need to assess the
appropriateness of our advice to
your specific needs before acting on
it.
You should read
the warnings contained in any
Statement of Advice, or any other
warnings that we give you carefully
before making any decision about an
insurance policy.
Statement of
Advice
You will receive
a Statement of Advice (SoA) whenever
we provide you with advice which
takes into account your objectives,
financial situation and needs. The
SoA will contain the advice that we
have given you, the basis of the
advice and other information on our
remuneration and any relevant
associations or interests. This will
enable you to make an informed
decision about your insurance needs.
When you ask us
to recommend an insurance policy for
you, we will usually only consider
the policies offered by the insurers
or insurance providers that we deal
with regularly. In giving you advice
about the costs and terms of
recommended polices we have not
compared those policies to other
policies available, other than from
those insurers we deal with
regularly.
Product
Disclosure Statement
If we offer to
arrange the issue of an insurance
policy to you, we will also provide
you with, or pass on to you, a
Product Disclosure Statement (PDS).
The PDS contains information about
the particular policy which will
enable you to make an informed
decision about purchasing that
policy. If the PDS is amended during
your insurance period with our
office, we will provide you with an
updated document.
Important
Relationships
Capital Mutual
Insurance Brokers is a shareholder
of Steadfast Group Limited
(Steadfast). Steadfast has exclusive
arrangements with some insurers
under which Steadfast will receive
between 0.5 - 1.0% commissions for
each product arranged by us with
those insurers. These payments are
used to operate Steadfast.
Depending on the
operating costs of Steadfast
(including the costs of member
services provided by Steadfast to us
and other Steadfast shareholders)
and the amount of total business we
place with the participating
insurers in any financial year, we
may receive a proportion of that
commission at the end of each
financial year.
As a shareholder
of Steadfast we have access to
member services including model
operating and compliance tools,
procedures, manuals, training,
legal, technical,
banking,recruitment advice and
assistance, group insurance
arrangements, product comparison and
placement support, claims support
and group purchasing arrangements.
These member services are either
funded by Steadfast, subsidised by
Steadfast or available exclusively
to shareholders for a fee.
You can obtain a
copy of Steadfast's FSG at
www.steadfast.com.au
How can you instruct
us?
You can provide
us with instructions in person, by
telephone, email or in writing.
New Business
Contact us as
soon as possible if you need cover
for a risk or property that is not
insured. If you need immediate
cover, we can usually obtain an
interim contract of insurance (which
is generally valid for a month or
less). To arrange this we will need
details of the property or risk and
all other information which you need
to disclose to the insurer. When we
obtain a covernote for you we will
advise you immediately and confirm
it to you in writing. We will also
send you a proposal for completion.
You will need to complete, sign and
return it to us as soon as possible
before the interim cover expires.
We will send the
original insurance contract
documents as soon as they are issued
correctly by your Insurer. As these
are legal documents, you should keep
them in a safe place.
Renewals
We will give you
at least 14 days notice of expiry of
any insurance contract which we
arranged or last renewed for you.
At that time we
will send you an offer to renew the
insurance contract and invoice for
the cost of renewal. If you want to
change the details of the cover,
contact us as soon as you receive
the renewal offer. If you wish us to
renew the contract on your behalf,
you must provide us with written
instructions to renew and pay the
premium and other charges before the
expiry date shown on the invoice.
Variations
You should
carefully monitor and review that
your insurance contract is adequate
to cover your assets or business
activities.
If you want to
vary any cover, (for eg. increase
the sums insured or add another
property) you must provide us with
details of the changes required in
writing. We will arrange the changes
with the insurer and provide you
with written confirmation. Any
refunds from the insurer will be
forwarded to you as soon as we
receive it.
Cancellation
We cannot cancel
a contract of insurance without
written instructions from a person(s)
who is authorised to represent each
of the parties who are named as
insureds in the contract of
insurance. If for any circumstances
you are unable to provide
instructions in writing and we
accept to cancel your policy
verbally, we will confirm the
cancellation in writing immediately
to your address on our records.
If a contract of
insurance is cancelled before expiry
of the period of insurance, we will
refund the premium from the insurer
as soon as it is received. We will
not refund our fees or commission
for arranging the insurance.
Claims
We will receive
your claims notification, assist,
and offer advice regarding the scope
of cover. We will forward this
information to the insurer.
If a loss
adjuster is appointed we shall, with
your permission, pass on your
contact details and co-ordinate
meetings. In the case of a major
loss, we can attend the initial
meeting with the loss adjuster if
you wish us to.
We will promptly
forward to you all claims
documentation, insurance company
settlement cheques and other
information.
Important
information you
should know
The following information is
important to contracts of insurance.
Duty of Disclosure
In order to make an informed
assessment of the risk and calculate
the appropriate premium, your
Insurer needs information about the
risk you are asking it to insure.
For this reason, before you enter
into a contract of insurance, you
have a duty to disclose to your
Insurer every matter that you know,
or could reasonably be expected to
know, is relevant to the insurer's
decision whether to accept the risk
and, if so, on what terms.
The duty also applies when you
renew, extend, vary or reinstate a
contract of insurance.
You do not have to disclose anything
that:
-
Reduces the
risk to be undertaken by the
insurer;
-
Is common
knowledge;
-
Your insurer
knows, or in the ordinary course
of its business, ought to know;
or
-
If the
insurer has waived your
obligation to disclose.
If you do not
comply with your duty of disclosure,
your Insurer may be entitled to
reduce its liability in respect of a
claim or may cancel your contract of
insurance. If the nondisclosure was
fraudulent, the insurer may be able
to void (or cancel) the contract of
insurance from its beginning. This
would have the effect that you were
never insured.
One important
matter to be disclosed is the
history of losses suffered by the
person seeking insurance or any
closely associated person or entity.
As you are responsible for checking
that you have made complete
disclosure, we suggest that you keep
an up to date record of all such
losses and claims.
If you have any
questions about whether information
needs to be disclosed, please
contact us.
Material
Changes
You must also
notify your Insurer of any
significant changes which occur
during the period of insurance. If
you do not, your insurance may be
inadequate to fully cover you.
We can assist you to do this to
ensure that your contract of
insurance is altered to reflect
those changes.
Cooling off
Period
If you decide
that you do not need a contract of
retail insurance, under statutory
regulations a cooling off period
commences the earlier of:
Where you
exercise your cooling off rights,
the contract will be terminated from
the time you notified the insurer
and the premium will be returned.
The insurer may retain its
reasonable administration and
transaction costs and a short term
premium.
You cannot return
the contract of insurance if it has
already expired or if you have made
a claim under it.
Sum insured or
Average Clause
Some insurance
contracts have provisions called
“average” or “Co-Insurance” clauses.
These clauses require you to bear a
portion of each loss or claim if the
sum insured is inadequate to cover
the amount of the loss.
If you do not
want to bear a proportion of any
loss when you arrange or renew your
contract of insurance, you must
ensure that the amount for which you
insure is adequate
to cover the full reinstatement
value of any loss. If you insure on
a new for old basis, the sum insured
must be sufficient to cover the new
replacement cost of the property.
Interest of
Other Parties
Some insurance
contracts do not cover the interest
in the insured property or the risk
of any one other than the person
named in the contract. Common
examples are where property is
jointly owned or subject to finance
but the contract only names one
owner or does not name the
financier.
Please tell us
about everyone who has an interest
in the property insured so that we
can ensure that they are noted on
the contract of insurance.
Waiver Rights
Some insurance
contracts seek to limit or exclude
claims where the insured person has
limited their rights to recover a
loss from the person who was
responsible for it, (for eg. by
signing an agreement which disclaims
or limits the liability of the other
party).
Please tell us
about any contracts of this type
which you have or propose to enter
into.
Standard
Covers
The regulations
to the Insurance Contracts Act set
out standard terms for cover which
is provided by motor vehicle, home
buildings, home contents, sickness
and accident, consumer credit and
travel insurance (including a
minimum amount of insurance). If an
insurer wants to alter these terms
or offer less than the minimum
amount of insurance they must
clearly inform you in writing that
they have done so. They can do this
by providing you with a Product
Disclosure Statement or a copy of
the insurance contract.
Invoices
We will invoice
you for the premium including all
statutory charges and fees. You must
pay us within 14 days of the date of
the invoice. In the case of
renewals, payment must be made
before expiry date of the contract
of insurance or within any
arrangement we have confirmed in
writing with you.
If you do not pay
the premium on time, the insurer may
cancel the contract of insurance and
you will not be insured. The insurer
may also charge a short term penalty
premium for the time on risk.
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