Generally, we don’t charge you any fee for the advice and transactional solutions that we provide to you. This is possible because, on settlement of a mortgage or issuance of a risk insurance policy, we usually receive commission from the applicable product provider as described above. There are two exceptions to this general position which is explained below.
We may charge you a one-off fee in the following situations:
(a) No commission: If you request that we provide services in relation to a product or service and we do not receive a commission. Any such fee would be agreed and authorised by you in writing before we complete the services, and would be based on an estimate of the time spent providing the advice.
This may arise in the rare event that you request that we provide services in relation to either a product that is offered by a provider that we do not hold an accreditation with, or a product that is outside our usual arrangements with our product providers.
(b) Commission has to be repaid: If you make certain changes to your loan, the lender can require me to repay to them the commission I received for your loan - this is called a ‘clawback’ and can be up to 100%
of the commission. This may occur if your loan is fully or partially repaid, or the terms materially changed within 28 months of settlement of your mortgage.
Any such fee would be no more than $3,000 (plus GST) and would be calculated based on a rate of $250.00 (plus GST) per hour of the financial adviser's time spent providing services to you in connection with the applicable mortgage or insurance. The fee charged would not exceed the amount of commission that needs to be paid back to the lender.
(c) Adviser fee
Some lenders (for example non-bank lenders) charge a fee which is capitalised (or added) to the amount of your loan. This fee is normally calculated as a percentage of your loan at drawdown but can be a flat fee - the fee for your specific scenario would be advised in advance.
Should we need to charge you a fee (in examples A or B above), you will be invoiced and will be given 30 days to make payment.