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Financial Services Guide

Last updated 21 December, 2022

About us

We are Alex Bank Pty Ltd ABN 13 627 244 848 (“Alex”), Australian Financial Services Licence and Australian Credit Licence 510805 (Alex, We, Us or Our).

What is the purpose of the Financial Services Guide

We have designed this Financial Services Guide (FSG) to assist you in deciding whether to acquire financial services from Alex.

The FSG provides you with information in relation to:

  • What financial services we can provide you.
  • Your entitlement to receive product disclosure information and when this will be provided.
  • Information about who Alex acts for when providing financial products and services.
  • Information about remuneration paid to Alex and other persons in relation to the financial services offered.
  • Any associations or relationships that may influence Alex in providing any of its services.
  • How we manage your privacy.
  • How to contact us.
  • How we deal with complaints and disputes.

What financial services and products we can provide you

Our AFSL authorises us to carry on a financial services business to:

  1. Provide general financial product advice for the following classes of financial products:
    1. Deposit and payment products including:
      1. Basic deposit products;
      2. Deposit products other than basic deposit products; and
      3. Non-cash payment products;
  2. Deal in a financial product by:
    1. Issuing, applying for, acquiring, varying or disposing of a financial product in respect of the following classes of financial products:
      1. Deposit and payment products including:
        1. Basic deposit products;
        2. Deposit products other than basic deposit products; and
        3. Non-cash payment products;
    2. applying for, acquiring, varying or disposing of a financial product on behalf of another person in respect of the following classes of financial products:
      1. Deposit and payment products including:
        1. Basic deposit products;
        2. Deposit products other than basic deposit products; and
        3. Non-cash payment products,

to retail and wholesale clients.

In addition to the financial products and services we provide under our AFSL, we also deal in and provide advice on consumer lending products which are covered under our Australian Credit Licence. This FSG does not cover our consumer lending products. For those products please refer to the relevant terms and conditions and policies available on our website.

What additional information you might receive

When we provide you with a financial product, we may also provide you with one or more Terms & Conditions documents, as described below.

Terms & Conditions provide you with essential information about a financial product offered by Alex so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to acquire the product.

We must provide you with Terms & Conditions about a financial product or service when:

  • you enquire about, or we provide personal financial product advice on the financial product; or
  • we issue, offer to issue, or arrange the issue of, the financial product to you.

Where permitted by law, we may provide you with the Terms & Conditions electronically. We do not need to provide you with the Terms & Conditions in certain circumstances, for example if you already have a copy.

General Advice only

The information in this FSG, on our Website and in the Terms & Conditions is general advice only, prepared without taking into account any of your individual objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on this advice you should consider the appropriateness of the advice, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.

On whose behalf do we provide financial services

We only deal in and provide advice in respect of deposit and payment products issued by Alex. We will not arrange for you to acquire products and services issued by third parties.

Fees, commission and benefits

Alex

The Terms & Conditions for our financial products and services disclose details of the fees, commissions and benefits paid and received by us. As we only issue our own products we are not paid any remuneration or incentives for referring other parties’ products.

Our employees and officers

Our staff are paid salaries and superannuation, not commissions. Our staff may be eligible to participate in an Employee Share Scheme that is based on a number of factors. These include contribution towards organisation objectives, extent of collaboration with other areas of the business and their own personal development. Where permitted by law, from time to time our staff may also receive non-monetary benefits from product providers, such as tickets to events or promotional merchandise.

Third parties

We may from time to time use third party comparison or product or rate aggregation websites in order to make potential customers aware of our products, market our products and/or provide potential customers with a link to our website or application process. Such websites may be remunerated by us for each referral or clickthrough that they generate.

As at the date of this FSG, the details of such remuneration are not known. However, you may request particulars of the remuneration (including commission) or other benefits paid to such third party websites within a reasonable time after you are given this FSG and before any financial service identified in this FSG is provided to you.

Our consumer lending products are outside the scope of this FSG but in the interest of full disclosure we note that we do use brokers to source and arrange our consumer lending products and they are paid fees for doing so. Please refer to our Credit Guide for more information.

Liability for services

We are regulated by APRA and as such are exempt from the compensation requirements in the Corporations Act 2001. Nonetheless we have professional indemnity insurance, which provides cover for claims that relate to the financial services that we and our representatives provide.

Privacy and confidentiality

Your privacy is important to us. We only collect, use, store and disclose your personal information in accordance with the requirements of law and our Privacy Policy. We will make reasonable efforts to keep any such information that we have about you secure and to ensure that any of our employees or agents who have access to information about you do not make any unauthorised use, modification, reproduction or disclosure of that information. You should notify us if any of your personal information changes. You can request access to your information held by us by contacting us in accordance with the procedures set out in our Privacy Policy. Our Privacy Policy contains information about how you may complain about a breach of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and the process by which your complaint will be handled. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for full details of the above.

Contact us

You can always reach us on phone and email during our business hours. Our contact details are:

Some financial products and services may have their own rules as to how to provide instructions or carry out certain transactions.  Please refer to the Terms & Conditions for the relevant product for these details.

Feedback and complaints

Our internal dispute resolution scheme

We hope you are delighted with our services, but if you wish to make a complaint, you can notify us in the following ways:

Please clearly provide your contact details, and the details of your complaint. We aim to resolve all complaints within 5 business days and if this is not possible we will keep you informed of our progress. If you do not hear from us within five business days, you may contact our Complaints Team by email at complaints@alex.bank or by phone at 13 ALEX.

External dispute resolution scheme

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, or if you consider that we have not responded to you in a timely manner, you may contact the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) online at www.afca.org.au, by phone on 1800 931 678, or by mail at GPO Box 3, Melbourne, VIC 3001.

See our Privacy Policy and our Statement of Notifiable Matters for further details about our dispute resolution procedures in respect of your personal information (including credit information).