We include our (1) dispute resolution policy, (2) CPD policy and (3) privacy policy.
‘We’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refers to our businesses, trading as ProSolution Private Clients consisting of:
- ProSolution Group Pty Ltd (ABN 54 096 725 370) which holds an Australian Financial Services Licenses and Australian Credit Licence;
- ProSolution Tax Advisory Pty Ltd (ABN 37 154 185 494) – provides tax agency services;
- ProSolution Wealth Advisory Pty Ltd (ABN 68 131 879 411) – provides financial advice; and
- ProSolution Advisory Services Pty Ltd (ABN 78 137 516 235) – provides life insurance advice.
POLICY # 1: DISPUTE RESOLUTION POLICY
Updated: 1 June 2023
As with all businesses we appreciate that matters do not always go as planned or expected so complaints are part and parcel of doing business including providing financial planning services as we do. This policy is to assist you to understand how complaints are handled by us and how you can notify us if you have a complaint.
Notification of complaint
If you are dissatisfied with the service, we have provided to you and you want us to take some action to address the situation you can notify us through:
- An email to swemyss@prosolution.com.au the subject line marked as COMPLAINT
- A telephone call to the representative who provided the service or if uncomfortable making that approach directly to 03 8624-4600.
- Visiting our office.
The format of the lodgement can be written or oral. We may ask you to confirm our understanding of your oral complaint so that we are all clear on the situation.
Assistance
If you need assistance in expressing your complaint, then we are prepared to listen and help you to set out the details. We are also prepared to engage with a person that you may nominate to act on your behalf however we will require that authorised consent from you (unless they are acting under a Power of Attorney).
If you are more comfortable using a language other than English, please let us know so that an interpreter can be engaged.
Our process
Once we receive your complaint, we will provide you with an acknowledgement in your preferred method of communication with 1 business day.
We will need to gather information from all parties involved in the complaint and consider that information in light of the situation you have brought to our attention; so, we may need to contact you during our assessment to clarify or obtain further information. Our promise is that we will always conduct investigations and assessments in a fair and unbiased manner.
You will receive our final response with clear explanations for our decisions.
Our final response will be provided to you within 30 calendar days of the receipt of the complaint. However, if your complaint is complex or there are unavoidable delays in receiving requested information from you this may impact our meeting that target. In those unexpected situations we will send you a Delay Notification which will set out the reasons for the delay and that you may escalate this to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority whose contact details are set out towards the end of this policy.
Timeframes
Just to reiterate our timeframes clearly
Acknowledgement of a complaint: 24 hours or 1 business day
Final response: 30 calendar days generally unless we issue a Delay Notification.
Contact us by:
Telephone: 03 8624-4600
Email: swemyss@prosolution.com.au
Face to face: at our business office, Level 8, 31 Queen Street Melbourne VIC 3000
Contact details for the Australian Financial Complaints Authority
Telephone: 1800 931 678 9:00am–5:00pm AEST/AEDT weekdays
Email; info@afca.org.au
Mail:
Australian Financial Complaints Authority Limited
GPO Box 3
Melbourne, VIC 3001
Online: Online complaint form (afca.org.au)
Making a complaint is at no cost to you at all at any stage.
POLICY # 2: CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY
Effective date: 1 July 2023 (Verion 1)
Training co-ordinator: Stuart Wemyss
Preamble
As an Australian Financial Services Licensee who has a licence to provide personal financial advice to retail clients, we are required to have in place a CPD Policy for the individuals who provide that personal advice on our behalf. The legislation has very specific requirements and our Policy is designed to address those requirements. In this Policy ‘our’ and ‘we’ refers to all parties.
Training Year
Our training year commences on 1 July each year. Each representative must have an Individual Training Plan for the relevant year which must be approved by us. These Training Plans will be recorded in the Kaplan Ontrack system. The representative must also record completed training and provide it to us for verification when requested to do so. Those representatives who do not complete the required training are to be reported for non-compliance to ASIC.
Content of training
Training must cover the following competencies and minimum hours in each category:
| CPD Area | Minimum hours | Content required for approval |
| Technical competence | 5 | The activity is designed to enhance participants’ technical proficiency and ability to develop and provide advice strategies that are appropriate to the objectives, financial situations and needs of different classes of retail clients. |
| Client care and practice | 5 | The activity is designed to enhance participants’ ability to act as a client-centric practitioner in advising retail clients. |
| Regulatory compliance and consumer protection | 5 | The activity is designed to enhance participants’ understanding of applicable legal obligations and how to comply with them. |
| Professionalism and ethics | 9 | The activity is designed to enhance participants’ capacity to act as an ethical professional. |
| Tax (financial) Advice | 5 | The activity is designed to enhance participants’ understanding of tax implications and obligations when advising clients on financial products. |
| General | No minimum set | The activity is designed to maintain and extend participants’ professional capabilities, knowledge and skills, including keeping up to date with regulatory, technical and other relevant developments, but is not in an area referred to in another item of this table. |
The number of hours to be completed by all Representatives in a training year must total a minimum of 40 hours and all specific Knowledge Targets must also be met.
You are permitted 4 hours of professional reading towards your minimum of 40 hours. We require that you record reading with the following detail:
- Title of article
- Publication
- Date
- Author
- Topics covered.
Although representatives are responsible for developing their training plans to assist you, we will provide a training plan which will include areas where we believe improvement is required and it will be based on CPD activities that we have approved. If a representative wants to amend the training plan they must seek approval from us and our approval will not be unreasonably withheld as long as the plan meets the minimum requirements as set out in Table above, sets out the areas for improvement and the overall total of required hours.
Approved CPD Activities
The session must clearly include content specific to the area of competency in Table above. It is to be presented by a suitably qualified person on the subject matter. It must contain an assessment to confirm the understanding of the subject matter by the representative.
The method of delivery can be face to face (such as an industry/association PD Day), or online through written communication or video/streaming (such as provided by Kaplan Ontrack), or through a published paper issued by Prosolution Group Pty Ltd or approved by us even though issued by an industry association or educational institution.
If a representative finds training material that may benefit other representatives in the group, the representative can submit it to us for consideration as an Approved CPD Activity.
The following will be taken into consideration when we assess a CPD Activity:
- the activity is in one of the CPD areas in the Table above;
- the activity has sufficient intellectual or practical content; Is the appropriate learning level and has appropriate technical or practical content:
- Clearly defined aims and learning outcomes;
- Clearly defined, logical structure that follows adult learning principles;
- Is current, accurate and up-to-date;
- the activity primarily deals with matters related to the provision of financial product advice and the associated business activities;
- the activity is led or conducted by one or more persons who are appropriate, and have sufficient standing, expertise, academic qualifications and practical experience;
- the activity is designed to enhance relevant providers’ knowledge and skills in areas that are relevant to the provision of financial product advice; and,
- Includes one or more of the following: workshop, face-face presentation, multimedia, worked examples, activities, case studies, tips, warnings, and if appropriate, reference to relevant legislation.
We have contracted with Kaplan Professional who will provide content which will meet the above CPD Activities for the compulsory competency areas, which means that all its content is regarded as Approved CPD Activities. While we have delegated this process, we retain the responsible as the Responsible Licensee for our relevant providers.
For us to consider a CPD Activity that has not previously been approved by us that a relevant provider has attended we will need:
(1) Proof of attendance/completion (e.g. certificate, digital record, transcript), which includes as a minimum:
(a) The name of the activity and the provider;
(b) The date the activity was undertaken;
(c) An overview of the activity;
(d) A bio or CV of person(s) who developed or presented the activity including academic qualifications and experience;
(e) The CPD area to which it relates;
(f) The duration in minutes/hours of the activity; and
(g) The letterhead and/or signature of the provider or an appropriate authorised person
Preference is given to activities with a structured assessment component. Evidence of the successful completion of the assessment is required.
Record Keeping
The representatives are required to retain records of:
- the qualifying CPD activities it undertakes and
- when they were undertaken and
- number of hours spent on each activity and
- evidence of completion of the activity and the outcomes of the activity and
- the progress of implementation of his or her CPD plan.
As mentioned earlier in this Policy we have contracted Kaplan Professional to provide content that meets the CPD Activities. Its online system, Ontrack also provides you and us with a training register that will record training completed through that system. Representatives will need to record other CPD Activities completed external to Ontrack and the Ontrack register has provision for that however you will need to provide evidence to support those entries to our Training Co-ordinator for Official Approval before it will be counted towards your targets.
We will periodically request, at least quarterly, records of your training completed to track that representatives are completing training that complies with our requirements. Where a representative is found not to be completing training on an ongoing basis, we will require that representative to catch up by the end of the following quarter or in the last quarter of the Training Year representatives will be required to have met all targets by the end of that quarter. Representatives who have not achieved the required training by the end of the training year, 30 June of each year, will be reported to the regulator that the standard required has not been met which in turn will be recorded on the Financial Adviser Register.
POLICY # 3: PRIVACY POLICY
Our commitment to protect your privacy
We understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document sets out our privacy policy commitment in respect of personal information we hold about you and what we do with that information.
We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have collected it or as allowed by law. It is important to us that you are confident that any personal information we hold about you will be treated in a way that ensures protection of your personal information.
Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles for the protection of personal information, as set out in the Privacy Act and any other relevant laws.
Personal information
When we refer to personal information, we mean information from which your identity is reasonably apparent. This information may include information or an opinion about you.
The kinds of personal information we may collect about you include your name, date of birth, address, account details, occupation, tax file number and any other information we made need to identify you or provide goods or services to you from time to time.
If you are applying for finance, we may also collect the ages and number of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time at your current address, your employment details and proof of earnings and expenses. If you apply for any insurance product through us, we may also collect your health information. We will only collect health information from you with your consent.
The personal information we collect and hold about you may include credit information. Credit information is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance and may include any finance that you have outstanding, your repayment history in respect of those loans, and any defaults. Usually, credit information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and credit reporting bodies.
If you want to purchase any of our services, we may also need to collect your payment information. We will also collect this information if we need to make payments to you. If you apply for employment with us, we will collect information about your work history and ask your referees about you.
Why we collect your personal information
We collect personal and financial information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing that finance. We may also collect your personal information for the purposes of direct marketing and managing our relationship with you. From time to time, we may offer you other products and services.
If you apply for employment with us, we will collect information about you to assist us to decide whether to appoint you.
We collect payment information, if necessary, in order to process your payments.
To enable us to maintain a successful business relationship with you, we may disclose your personal information to other organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us. The types of organisations to which we are likely to disclose information about you include other mortgage intermediaries, lenders, valuers, lenders mortgage insurers, surveyors, accountants, credit reporting bodies, recoveries firms, debt collectors and lawyers.
How do we collect your personal information?
We collect information from you in several ways and we will ask for your consent to do so in the first instance:
- We collect your information when you provide us your information via our website, prosolution.com.au and via a secure form provided by www.formstack.com. If you engaged one of our services, our staff may record and save information to your record on the Platform or within our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
- While we do not use browsing information to identify you personally, we may record certain information about your use of our website, such as which pages you visit, the time and date of your visit and the internet protocol address assigned to your computer.
- We may also use ‘cookies’ or other similar tracking technologies on our website that help us track your website usage and remember your preferences. Cookies are small files that store information on your computer, TV, mobile phone or other device. They enable the entity that put the cookie on your device to recognise you across different websites, services, devices and/or browsing sessions. You can disable cookies through your internet browser, but our websites may not work as intended for you if you do so.
- We may collect your personal information directly from you either face to face or via video or audio conferencing.
- We may collect information from you via documents you send us or upload onto OneDrive
- We may also collect your personal information from credit reporting bodies, finance brokers and other people such as accountants, lawyers and referees in our efforts to service your needs and / or to formally validate your information against what you provided us verbally or online
Do we disclose your personal information?
We may disclose your personal information:
- to prospective funders/lenders, lenders mortgage insurers, the ATO and credit reporting bodies or other intermediaries in relation to your finance requirements (Note: this will only occur with your authorisation);
- to companies that provide software and infrastructure systems to us;
- to anybody who represents you, such as finance brokers, lawyers, financial planners and accountants (Note: this will only occur with your authorisation);
- where we are required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money or Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) or in accordance with a subpoena or summons issued by a court.
Credit information
We may collect the following kinds of credit information and exchange this information with credit reporting bodies and other entities (with your consent):
- credit liability information about your existing finance which includes but is not limited to the name of the credit provider, whether the credit provider holds an Australian Credit Licence, the type of finance, the day the finance is entered into, the terms and conditions of the finance, the maximum amount of finance available, borrowing capacity and the day on which the finance was terminated;
- repayment history information which is information about whether you meet your repayments on time;
- information about the type of finance that you are applying for;
- default and payment information; and
- court proceedings information.
We exchange this credit information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance, managing that finance and any outstanding liabilities to us.
This credit information may be held by us in electronic form on our secure data servers or may also be held in paper form in secure lockable cabinets. We may use cloud storage to store the credit information we hold about you.
If or when we obtain credit information from a credit reporting body about you, we may also seek publicly available information and information about any serious credit infringement that you may have committed.
Notifiable matters
The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit information. You may request to have these notifiable matters (and this privacy policy) provided to you in an alternative form.
We exchange your credit information with credit reporting bodies and/or debt collection companies. We use the credit information that we exchange with the credit reporting body and/or debt collection companies to assess your creditworthiness, assess your application for finance, manage your finance or any outstanding liabilities with us.
If you fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any finance that we have provided or arranged, or you have committed a serious credit infringement then we may disclose this information to a credit reporting body and/or debt collection companies.
You have the right to request access to the credit information that we hold about you and make a request for us to correct that credit information if needed. Please see the heading Access and correction to your personal and credit information below.
Sometimes your credit information will be used by credit reporting bodies for the purposes of ‘pre-screening’ credit offers on the request of other credit providers. You can contact the credit reporting body at any time to request that your credit information is not used in this way.
You may contact the credit reporting body to advise them that you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud. For a period of 21 days after the credit reporting body receives your notification the credit reporting body must not use or disclose that credit information. You can contact any of the following credit reporting bodies for more information:
- veda.com.au
- dnb.com.au
- experian.com.au
Direct marketing
From time to time, we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, financial services, property, tax and money matters, offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company with whom we are associated.
ProSolution will share your personal and financial information across our groups of companies to better serve you and for the provision of educational and marketing purposes.
If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such information by notifying us by email or phone. If the direct marketing is by email, you may also use the unsubscribe function. We will not charge you for giving effect to your request and will take all reasonable steps to meet your request within a reasonable time frame.
Updating your personal information
It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. During our relationship with you we may ask you to inform us if any of your personal information has changed.
Access and correction to your personal and credit information
We will provide you with access to any other personal, financial and credit information we hold about you. You may request access to any of the personal information we hold about you at any time.
We may charge a fee for our costs of retrieving and supplying the information to you.
Depending on the type of request that you make we may respond to your request immediately, otherwise we aim to respond within 30 days of receiving your request. We may need to contact other entities to properly investigate your request.
There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal information, for example, if the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, or if your request is vexatious.
An explanation will be provided to you if we deny you access to the personal information we hold about you.
If any of the personal information we hold about you is incorrect, inaccurate or out of date you may request that we correct the information. If appropriate we will correct the personal information at the time of the request. Otherwise, we will provide an initial response to you within seven days of receiving your request. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal information within 30 days.
We may need to consult with other entities as part of our investigation.
If we refuse to correct personal information, we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting the information.
Using government identifiers
When we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file number, we do not use or disclose this information other than as required by law or to conduct any tax work you engage us to perform on your behalf.
Business without identifying you
In most circumstances it will be necessary for us to identify you to successfully do business with you, however, where it is lawful and practicable to do so, we will offer you the opportunity of doing business with us without providing us with personal information, for example, if you make general inquiries about interest rates or current promotional offers.
How safe and secure is your personal information that we hold?
We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information in electronic form on our secure servers, and it may also be held in paper form in secure lockable cabinets. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
There are also instances when we share data, it may be transferred to, and processed outside of Australia. Some data is stored within 3rd party software suppliers, where external access is prevented; and cloud service providers whose servers are located outside of Australia.
Personal data on servers operated by cloud service providers are protected by the appropriate safeguards, which are incorporated into our agreements with such cloud service providers such as Microsoft.
Complaints
If you are dissatisfied with how we have dealt with your personal information, or you have a complaint about our compliance with the Privacy Act, you may contact our complaints officer as discussed above (policy # 1).
We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days. We aim to provide you with a decision on your complaint within 30 days.
Further information
You may request further information about the way we manage your personal or credit information by contacting us.
Change in our privacy policy
We are constantly reviewing all our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations. Consequently, we may change this privacy policy from time to time or as the need arises.
You may request this privacy policy in an alternative form.
This Privacy Policy came into existence on 1 June 2023.
