This Disclosure Statement was prepared on:
Transitional License Holder effective 15/02/2021:
Financial Services Provider Register Number:
Address:
Phone Number:
Trading Names:
Email Address:
Authorised Bodies Included in License:
24 February 2021
Maurice Trapp Group Limited
FSP107344
Level 2, 14 Jervois Road, Ponsonby Auckland 1011
PO Box 56004, Dominion Road, Auckland 1443
09 630 5884
Maurice Trapp Group Limited
Momentum
Maurice Trapp Group Union Plus Ltd
Group Plus Ltd
Lewis Limited
Cooney Insurance
KSL Insurance Ltd
Financial Design Group Limited
For the purposes of this document Maurice Trapp Group (MTGL) means all Maurice Trapp Group entities and Authorised Bodies as detailed above.
Maurice Trapp Group Limited is a limited liability company that holds agency and contractual agreements with insurance companies and product providers and owns ongoing rights to contractual income streams, enters into commercial agreements for the provision/receipt of professional business services and employs administrative and support staff. MTGL holds a license issued by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) to provide financial advice. MTGL hold representative agencies with the following financial services/Kiwi Saver providers:
MTGL has approximately 8,000 clients nationwide, of whom approximately 80% are Personal or Business risk only clients, 10% are corporate services i.e. employee benefits and a further 10% are KiwiSaver clients.
Each Financial Adviser contracted to or employed by MTGL and its Authorised Bodies, is registered on the Financial Services Providers Register, and adheres to the Maurice Trapp Group Ltd Code of Ethics, including being bound by the professional development requirements and complaints provisions. MTGL and associated Companies maintains Professional Indemnity insurance through Berkshire Hathaway.
All financial advisers in New Zealand have a legal responsibility to act with care, diligence and skill and not act in a way that is misleading deceptive or confusing.
Our Adviser network provides advice primarily on Risk Insurance Products.
We provide Personal Advice that considers your goals, needs and/or financial circumstances. This can be scoped to consider one or many different areas including but not limited to wealth protection, budgeting, succession and retirement planning.
For Risk Insurances we work with six companies – AIA, Asteron Life, AMP/AXA, Cigna, Fidelity Life and Partners Life.
For Health Insurance we work with five companies – Accuro, AIA, Partners Life, Nib, Southern Cross and UniMed.
Your financial adviser will work closely with you to understand your current situation, your appetite for risk and your financial goals. Based on the information you provide the Adviser, they will develop a tailor made financial plan (Statement of Advice) detailing recommendations (including advantages and pitfalls) and a strategy so the steps to your goals are clearly outlined.
In providing you with financial advice, we will only consider existing term life, trauma, income protection and health insurance policies (if any). We will not provide advice on existing Whole of Life or Endowment products so you will need to consult a specialist if you would like advice on those products.
Group and Employee Benefit protection is a collective approach implemented by Businesses to protect either key people and/or provide insurances for their staff as an employee benefit.
Kiwi Saver is a voluntary savings scheme that was set up by the Government. Our Adviser Team can guide you with choosing a Kiwi Saver provider, however they cannot provide advice on suggested Investment contribution percentages or which fund category is best for you- for example Conservative / Balanced / Aggressive. Kiwi Saver is not guaranteed by the Government. This means you make your investment choices in a Kiwi Saver scheme at your own risk.
For Kiwi Saver we work with four providers – Generate, Booster, NZ Funds, and Fisher Funds.
We are remunerated by a percentage of commissions or fixed fee from Insurance and Kiwi Saver Providers. We also receive a percentage of trail commissions earned on renewed Risk policies and fixed fee on Kiwi Saver.
We do not have any performance quotas with any insurance companies or product providers.
All income is received by MTGL and may vary for many reasons, including overall new business levels generated, market/consumer confidence or satisfaction, amendments to commission terms and structures by product providers or other parties, impact of competition or economic conditions on existing clients/business levels.
As a member of NZFSG our Risk Business only is consolidated with other Brokerages within NZFSG and an over-ride is paid to them. Other than that, MTGL has no preferential terms (other than those readily offered to other market participants) or production performance agreements with any particular provider.
MTGL does not charge fees, expenses or any such amount for the financial advice provided by our Advisers to our clients.
MTGL receives commissions from the providers on whose products our Advisers give financial advice. This commission is split between the business and the Adviser. These commissions vary from provider to provider. If you decide to take out insurance or take our Kiwi Saver advice, the commissions paid will be determined by the amount of premium or the Kiwi Saver balance.
We also maintain a soft dollar (Gift) register where all incidentals received from time to time by Product/Insurance Providers by the way of bottles of wine, tickets to events, hampers etc. are recorded, of which the values are relatively insignificant.
We mitigate the potential for conflicts of interest to arise by:
MTGL maintains registers of Gifts and Conflicts of Interest. These Registers are monitored to identify if further training is required.
The Financial Advisers contracted to MTGL, have a duty under the Code of Professional Conduct to acquire the competence, knowledge and skills to provide the services they promote. They only provide advice on products and areas where they are competent to do so. In order to ensure their knowledge and understanding of the products are current and objective, Maurice Trapp Group Limited Advisers, attend to their own due diligence, on a regular basis, with product providers.
They also:
When our Advisers give advice, they follow the internationally recognised six step financial advice process
These are only some of the duties we are bound by. More information is available by contacting us, or by visiting the Financial Markets Authority website at https://www.fma.govt.nz.
We expect to maintain a high standard of ethical conduct. We will not tolerate action which falls short of the high standard of integrity and conduct expected or brings MTGL into disrepute.
We will act with integrity and behave ethically, fulfil our responsibilities and obligations, and act honestly, fairly and be transparent.
We will maintain a level of competence, knowledge and skill that will give our clients confidence in our business.
We encourage and recognise good conduct, from the top down, and clients can therefore be confident that we will consistently act in the client’s best interest.
We will protect our client information against loss and unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure.
We will always comply with our Code of Professional Conduct and with MTGL internal policies and procedures.
MTGL has an operational Complaints Policy in place. If you are not satisfied with our financial advice service, you can make a complaint by emailing . When we receive a complaint we will consider it following our internal Complaints process detailed as follows:
Within one week, we: – acknowledge the complaint in writing – provide you with information about our internal complaints process – advise you how to complain to the Financial Markets Authority – provide details about the Disputes Resolution Scheme to which we belong – Maurice Trapp Group Limited’s Administration Manager, to note the complaint in a “complaints register” and update this periodically with the actions taken to resolve the complaint
All client complaints against any adviser of MTGL, are recorded.
All complaints are referred to Senior Management and then the Adviser concerned with assistance from their dedicated Administration support person. This support person and the Adviser are tasked with handling the complaint directly, with a view to resolving it as swiftly as possible with the maximum client satisfaction.
If the complaint still cannot be resolved, we will advise you again of the existence of the Disputes Resolution Service of which we are a member and details of how to contact them. We will explain that it is free of charge.
We will contact our Disputes Resolution Service provider within three days of reaching deadlock with you and provide our DRS provider with the details for them to commence their complaints handling process. The process from that point will depend on the DRS’s own internal process.
MTGL publicises the complaints process to clients on the company website and it is documented within the company’s Procedures Manual, together with being included in each Advisers Disclosure process.
Financial Services Complaints Ltd
Address: PO Box 5967, Wellington 6140
Telephone Number: 0800 347 257
Email Address:
You can check that we are a registered financial services provider at http://www.fspr.govt.nz.
You can report information or complain about our conduct to the Financial Markets Authority, but in the event of a disagreement you may choose to first use the dispute resolution procedures described above.
To the best of our knowledge and belief, the information contained in this Disclosure Statement is true and complete and complies with the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 and Financial Markets Conduct (Regulated Financial Advice Disclosure) Amendment Regulations that take effect on 15 March 2021.
Signed
Brent Wright Maurice Trapp
Director Chairman