Financial Advice Disclosure Statement for Retail Clients

We provide financial advice to retail clients in relation to our:

• personal savings products;
• personal lending products, including home loans, personal loans, overdrafts and credit cards;
• business savings products;
• managed investment schemes (including the ASB KiwiSaver Scheme) which are issued by ASB Group Investments Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of ours;
• discretionary investment management service, called Portfolio Series; and
• personal health, and personal and business life and disability insurance products, excluding guaranteed acceptance products, which are underwritten by AIA New Zealand Limited (AIA).
  

Except as set out in this paragraph, we do not provide financial advice on products from other providers or on our legacy products (i.e. products that we no longer offer). The only exceptions to this are: 

• our Insurance Managers can advise you on replacing ASB Essential Living Assurance with one of our current products.  For all other existing ASB legacy policies, and policies with other providers, they can advise on whether you are holding the appropriate level of cover to meet your goals. Unless you advise otherwise their advice will be based on the assumption you wish to retain your existing policies;
  
• our Wealth Managers may provide advice on products from other providers in certain circumstances. 

There are also some limitations to the advice we will give or that is given on our behalf. For:

• home and personal lending (including overdrafts), our advice is limited to the loan product type only. We will not provide advice on loan amount, rate or term. There is one exception to this, our Financial Assistance team will provide advice on loan term extensions and repayment terms for affordability reasons during times of financial hardship;

• term deposits and the Term Fund, our advice is limited to recommending that type of product only. We will not provide advice on term deposit or Term Fund maturity period. For example, we might recommend that you set up a term deposit, but will not provide advice on the maturity period for that deposit;
  
  
• the Cash Fund and Term Fund, our advice does not take into account your tax rate. The Cash Fund and Term Fund will be presented as alternative options to a bank account or term deposit for you to consider. 
  

Generally, we, and our staff providing regulated financial advice on our behalf, only provide financial advice on our products and services and managed investment schemes issued by ASB Group Investments Limited (see section '2. What is the nature and scope of our financial advice services' above for more information). We collect fees and other amounts in relation to the products we or our staff recommend if you acquire those products (see section '3. What fees will you pay for our financial advice services?' for more details).

We own ASB Group Investments and receive a share of the profit generated by the managed investment schemes it issues. That means we will benefit financially if you join the schemes, or, in some cases, change your fund within a scheme.

We follow a process to ensure our advice is based solely on the answers to the questions we ask you and not any other factors. This also ensures we prioritise your interests above our own.

If you have a complaint about our financial advice service, please let us know so we can try to resolve the issue right away.

You can do this in several ways:

• contact your relationship manager or the manager of the department that handled the matter; 
• tell a staff member at one of our branches;
• call our Contact Centre on 0800 803 804;
• if your complaint is relating to ASB Securities, contact the Online and Telephone Trading team on 0800 272 732 or (09) 377 8930; or
• use our feedback form available from any of our branches or at asb.co.nz. 

What is our complaints process?
Under our complaints process we will investigate your complaint internally and aim to resolve it in a fair, timely and transparent manner. We will contact you to discuss the outcome following our investigation.

If you are unhappy with the outcome, you can escalate your complaint to our Customer Care Team either by requesting that your complaint is passed onto one of our Customer Care Managers; or contacting one of our Customer Care Managers directly on (09) 377 8930.

We are a member of the Banking Ombudsman Dispute Resolution Scheme. It is a free, independent dispute resolution service. If your complaint is not resolved by us, the Banking Ombudsman may help to investigate or resolve your complaint.

You can contact the Banking Ombudsman at:

Address:
Freepost 218002
PO Box 25327
Featherston Street
Wellington 6146

Phone:
0800 805 950

Email:
help@bankomb.org.nz

If your complaint relates to ASB Securities Limited, it is a member of Financial Services Complaints Limited. It is a free, independent dispute resolution service. If your complaint is not resolved by us, Financial Services Complaints Limited may help to investigate or resolve your complaint.

You can contact Financial Services Complaints Limited at:

Address:
PO Box 5967
Wellington 6140

Phone:
0800 347 257

Email:
info@fscl.org.nz