Licence status and conditions
Abraham & Associates Limited, (FSP144464) trading as Abraham Insurance (Abraham Insurance, we, our) holds a financial advice provider licence, issued by the Financial Markets Authority, to provide financial advice.
It is a condition of our licence that we, together with any person giving advice on our behalf, can only provide advice on General Insurance and Risk products.
Nature and scope of financial advice service
We engage financial advisers to provide financial advice on general, life and health insurance products on our behalf.
These are policies that insure your personal or business assets or protect you or your business assets, liabilities and business income.
We are not able to provide advice on investment policies but are able to refer you to associates who are licensed to provide advice on such products.
We have access to most insurance markets in New Zealand (excluding direct Insurers) along with access to overseas markets as required.
A list of the types of general, life and health insurance we can provide financial advice on and the product providers who provide such insurance products can be found here www.abraham.co.nz
Duties
Abraham Insurance and our financial advisers are bound by the following duties under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 to:
- meet the standards of competence, knowledge, and skill set out in the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advice Services (Code of Conduct), which form part of the wider regulatory regime for financial advice and ensure we have the expertise necessary to provide you with advice; and
- give priority to your interests by taking all reasonable steps to ensure that the advice given to you is not materially influenced by our own interests or the interests of any other person connected with the giving of advice; and
- exercise care, diligence, and skill that a prudent person engaged in the occupation of giving related financial advice would in the same circumstances; and
- meet the standards of ethical behaviour, conduct, and client care set out in the Code of Conduct, to treat you as we should and to provide you with suitable advice.
Conflicts of interest and brokerage or other incentives
We are a member of Steadfast NZ Limited (Steadfast). Steadfast supplies technology platforms, management, marketing, professional, technical, and buying benefits and services to support us in providing our financial advice services.
Abraham Insurance will receive brokerage from the insurance companies on whose policies we give advice. The rates of brokerage may vary between 0%-25% dependent on Insurers and types of policies. If you decide to take out a policy, the insurer will pay us brokerage based on a percentage of the premium that is applicable. We may also agree to a package discount on the total cost of insurance. No brokerage is payable on any Government taxes (GST) or Statutory taxes ( FENZ Levies or EQC Levies)
A financial adviser may have a conflict of interest in circumstances where financial advice has been provided to two clients who later have a dispute, including in respect of liability. In this instance, the adviser would clearly disclose the conflict of interest to the clients and would refer one of these clients to another of our financial advisers for further advice and assistance.
Service margin, expenses or other amounts payable
We do not charge a service margin for the advice given to you but may charge a service margin for implementing that advice. This service margin will be based on a percentage of the insurer premium to provide and implement our advice to you, payable on payment of your premium. The service margin is to provide and maintain our high service, support the lifecycle of the policy by, implementing the policy as per the advice provided, ensuring all Government and Statutory taxes are paid to the Government, this also covers the Distribution functions of the business including overheads IT, Insurers and Documentation Management software and all compliance and legal costs attributable to the running of the business.
Premium funding
Premium funding products enable you to pay the insurance premium over the term of your policy by instalments rather than as one amount. With the option of paying monthly, you can easily spread “the cost of your policies over the course of a year. For some, this is a more manageable choice and allows you to more effectively manage policy expenses. If you enter into such an arrangement the premium funder may pay us a commission as a percentage of the amount they fund. Commission will be paid to us directly from the premium funder.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with our financial advice service please contact your financial adviser so he or she can try to put things right.
If you wish to make a complaint or do not feel comfortable discussing your concerns with your adviser, you can contact us as follows:
- Call us on (03) 348 2943 between the hours of 8:30am – 5:00pm week days
- Email us at [email protected]
- Write to us at PO Box 8951, Riccarton 8440 addressing your letter to the attention of Complaints Manager
How your Complaint will be handled
Your adviser will attempt to resolve any issue of dissatisfaction with you immediately.
If the matter cannot be resolved to your satisfaction, the adviser will escalate the complaint to his or her manager, notifying you accordingly. We will send you an acknowledgement of your complaint within five working days of your complaint being notified to us. This letter will provide you with our timeline to respond to you and the name of the manager who will be managing our response. The manager will investigate and contact you to try to resolve the complaint to your satisfaction. It is important that you provide this person with all relevant information.
We will provide you with a written update within 20 working days of receiving your complaint. If we are unable to provide a full response to you at that point, our letter will explain why we are not yet in a position to do so and tell you when we will next contact you.
40 working days after the receipt of your complaint we will issue a final resolution. If we need to continue our review past this point, we will explain to you the reason for the delay and the required timeframe to provide a full response. At this point, if you feel that the delay is unsatisfactory, you can redirect your complaint to our external dispute resolution service provider detailed below.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint
We expect that our response to you will have addressed the concerns you have raised. If you feel that your concerns have not been appropriately considered, we invite you to submit any further information for consideration.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint despite our best efforts, you can contact our external dispute resolution scheme, who provides a free and independent dispute resolution service.
The contact details for our external dispute resolution service provider are:
Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman Scheme (IFSO)
Level 2, Solnet House, 70 The Terrace
Wellington 6143
PO Box 10-845, Wellington 6143
0800 888 202
Please refer to the website for full details of our dispute resolution process:
Contact details
Abraham & Associates Limited (FSP144464), trading as Abraham Insurance is the Financial Advice Provider. We can be contacted as follows:
PO Box 8951
(03) 348 2943