Date: 1 April 2025
Version: 1.0

Purpose

Our Website Disclosure Information (WDI) is designed to keep you fully informed about your rights, entitlements and the financial services we offer. As a self-licensed firm, our WDI ensures that we maintain transparency and regulatory compliance while helping you to make an informed decision about whether to any of the services we can offer. It contains important information about:

  • Our company and our contact details.
  • What services we provide and how we are remunerated for these services.
  • Any (potential) conflicts of interest we may have.
  • Our complaints process.
  • Our Privacy Policy.

Licensee – Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd (HFG)

HFG is fully owned by the principles of our business and holds our Australian Financial Services License (AFSL No. 284909). HFG authorises the other providing entities.

ABN: 80 111 998 068
AFSL: 284909

Level 2, 1 McLaren Street, North Sydney, NSW, 2060

Ph: (02) 8908 4300  |  E: [email protected]  |  W: harvestgroup.com.au

Providing entities

This WDI covers services provided by the below Providing Entities. The entity responsible for providing advice you receive from us will always clearly be identified on the advice document.

Who will be providing the financial services?

Advice given by your adviser will be provided under one of the following corporate providing entities:

  • Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd (Licensee): provides financial services and advice directly under its AFSL.
  • Harvest Employee Benefits Pty Ltd (Corporate Authorised Representative 287130): this company is authorised by Harvest Financial Group to provide financial services and advice on its behalf under its AFSL.

The services we may offer you

HFG is licenced to offer the following financial services:

  • deal in financial products
  • provide financial product advice.

HFG has authorised the above Providing Entities to provide financial product advice and deal in:

  • Superannuation
  • Retirement and income stream products.
  • Managed investments include investor directed portfolio services.
  • Securities.
  • Government debentures and bonds.
  • Life Insurance and other wealth protection products (such as income protection and trauma insurance).
  • Retirement Savings Accounts.
  • Basic and non-basic deposit products.
Limitation of independence

Due to regulatory changes, we can’t call ourselves independent. Here’s why.

The law makes it very difficult for most advisers to say they are independent, unbiased or impartial, even if they are not in any way linked to or licensed by a financial product provider (like a bank).

If, for example, an adviser gets paid a commission to help a client arrange some insurance they are automatically prohibited from calling themselves independence. Many clients prefer for us to be paid for their insurance advice via a fixed commission instead of a direct fee to them. As such, from time to time we receive these commissions.

So, although we always put your interests before ours and ensure that our advice is never influenced by remuneration methods, when giving advice we cannot (by law) call ourselves independent.

Other documents & disclosures you may receive from us

Statement of Advice (SOA)

If we give you personal financial advice, you will be given an SOA. Personal advice is advice that considered your specific financial objectives, situation and needs. It will include details of our advice, the basis on which we have made those recommendation as well as other relevant information such as our advice fees and ongoing service arrangements.

Record of Advice (ROA)

If further advice is provided to you, and your circumstances and the scope of the original advice have not changed materially, a ROA will be created within our system to record the details of the additional advice we provided. You may request a copy of this record at any time by contacting us.

Product Disclosure Statement (PDS)

Before you acquire and interest in a financial product you will receive a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) or other disclosure document that has been issued by the product provider. This document will contain important information about the product including the risks, benefits features and any product fees payable. It is designed to help you make an informed decision about whether to acquire and interest in the financial product.

Ongoing fee consent

Where we agree an ongoing advice and servicing arrangement, and our fees for this service are deducted from one or more of your products or accounts automatically, we will provide you with an ongoing fee consent agreement. This agreement is renewed on an annual basis by yourself and may be cancelled at any time.

General Advice Warning (GAW)

If we give you any advice that is of a general nature (i.e. is not personal advice) we will warn you that the advice is of a general nature only and does not consider your specific financial objectives, situation and needs. This warning will be given at time we provide you with the advice and in the same formal. For example, if we provide you with general advice by email, the GAW will be included in the body of the email or if we provide general advice over the phone, we will provide the warning over the phone.

If we provide you with a general advice warning it is important that you consider that advice in light of you own personal financial objective, situation and needs before acting on the advice.

What information do you need to provide?

As part of our advice process we will work though our Fact Find and Investor Profile Questionnaire. These documents as you to provide certain information which assists us to fully understand your personal circumstances, objectives and needs. In some cases, we may need to seek further information from you. You should also try to volunteer any other information that you would like us to consider or that you may think relevant to the advice you are seeking. Providing this information is crucial to allow us to offer you the most appropriate advice possible.

Do you have to provide all requested information?

You have the right not to provide or withhold any particular information that you may not wish to disclose. However, if you choose to do so, the advice you receive may not be appropriate for your financial objectives, situation and needs.

Privacy policy

We maintain a secure record of the information you have provided to us. We also maintain records of any advice we have given you.

Harvest is committed to protecting and ensuring the privacy and security of your personal information. To this end, we maintain strict privacy and information security policies, copies of which are available on request.

How to view the information we hold about you

If you would like to view the information we hold about you, please ask us. We will make arrangements for you to do so.

How you can instruct us

You may tell us how you would like to give us instructions. For example, in writing, by phone, or be electronic means such as email.

If we give you personal advice, we will ask you to acknowledge your agreement with the proposed strategies in writing either via Client Acceptance and Authority form, or via other written medium such as email.

Fees and charges

We believe in open and transparent fees. Before we provide you with any advice, we will agree a fee with you for our advice and services. This fee will depend on the scale and complexity of the advice you require. Prior to the commencement of work, we may ask for your agreement to the fee in writing and in some cases, may ask for a pre-payment for part of all of the fee.

Harvest works on either an agreed fixed fee, percentage of assets or brokerage (for insurance only). All fees payable to Harvest will be disclosed in your SOA.

Fees paid by you can be done so either directly to us after the issue of an invoice, by direct debit or via deduction from investments placed through Harvest Financial Group.

Remuneration

Harvest Financial Group and Harvest Employee Benefits are part of the same group of companies and are related bodies corporate. All fee paid by you are paid to Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd. After covering the cost of administration of and compliance with its AFSL, all residual income attributable to Harvest Employee Benefits is paid to it. No fees are paid to any third party.

How are our advisers remunerated?

Our advisers are paid a salary by Harvest Employee Benefits Pty Ltd. Our Advisers do not receive a portion of the fees charged to you and their remuneration is therefore not linked to the types of services or products they recommend to you.

If your Adviser is a Principal of the business (i.e. a shareholder), they may also be entitled to receive a portion of the profits of the company in the form of a dividend.

Conflicts of interest

Do we have any relationships or associations with Financial Product issuers?

No, the Harvest Group of companies does not have any relationships, ownership or licencing links with any financial product issuers.

Approved Product List (APL)

As the holder of an AFSL, Harvest Financial Group maintains an APL which contains a record of all of the products that have been approved for use by our advisers. Our APL is managed jointly by our Investment Committee and our Compliance Committee. Important, as we hold our own AFSL, there are no restrictions on the range and types of products that can be included on our APL. We take an “open APL” approach to the products we include in our APL, meaning that all products which meet certain quality and capability requirements are eligible for inclusion on our APL. This ensures that we do not have any product biases and recommend products which we believe are solely in your best interests.

Do you accept any “soft dollar” benefits?

We do not accept any “soft” benefits with a value in excess of $300 and that may be construed to influence our opinion on any matter. Soft benefits under $300 may consist of personal entertainment including meals, technical and/or product training sessions, invitation to sporting events or gifts.

Conflict management policy

We acknowledges that it is not always possible to eliminate all potential actual or perceived conflicts of interest. We have therefore put in place a strict conflict management policies and procedures to ensure that any potential actual or perceived conflicts of interest are identified and managed to ensure that you are disadvantaged by them.

Adequacy of compensation arrangements

Harvest Financial Group has professional indemnity insurance in place to ensure that compensation is available in the unlikely event that we or one of our representatives is found to have caused a client to suffer loss or damage due to a breach of any relevant obligation under the Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). This insurance arrangement meets with requirements for compensation arrangements under s912b of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).

Other things you should be aware of

  • Before accepting our advice, ensure you have read and understood all of the information provided to you. If you have any questions or doubts, your should seek further legal and/or financial advice before entering into any agreement with us.
  • Harvest has certain obligations at law to report on fraud, forgery, illegal activities and any suspicious financial arrangements.

Provisional Financial Advisers

Our advisers may supervise a provisional financial adviser completing his or her professional year. If a provisional financial adviser works on your advice, his or her supervisor will inform you of matters relating to the provisional financial adviser in accordance with the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).

A provisional financial adviser’s supervisor is responsible for any personal advice provided by the provisional financial adviser to you.

Our dispute resolution procedures

If have any complaints about the service we have given you, please contact us first by contacting our Head of Compliance on:

Email: [email protected]
Phone: (02) 8908 4300
Post: PO Box 1150, North Sydney, NSW, 2059

We have adopted a best practice complaint handling process to ensure:

  • Acknowledgement of your concerns within 24 hours of receipt.
  • Speeds assessment and investigation.
  • Timely provision of a response (known as an IDR response) no more that 30 days after receiving your complaint.

If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction, we will refer you to the free industry complaints handling body outlined below:

Provider: Australian Financial Complaints Authority
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 1800 931 678 (free call)
Website: www.afca.org.au

Please note that time limits may apply to complain to AFCA. You should consult the AFCA website to determine when the time limit relevant to your
circumstances may expire.

Who is your adviser?

Mario Isaias | Director

Mario is a Director and an Authorised Representative of Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd (AFSL 284909). Mario is also a Director of Harvest Employee Benefits Pty Ltd which is a Corporate Authorised Representative of Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Economics | Sydney University
  • Charted Accountant | Institute of Chartered Accountants
  • Diploma of Superannuation Management Macquarie University

Experience

Mario has over 30 years’ experience in financial services advising both corporate clients and individuals on superannuation, employee benefits, insurance, investments and other financial services.

Alex Isaias | Director

Alex is a Director and an Authorised Representative of Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd (AFSL 284909). Alex is also a Director of Harvest Employee Benefits Pty Ltd which is a Corporate Authorised Representative of Harvest Financial Group Pty Ltd.

Qualifications

  • Batchelor of Arts (Political Economics) | Sydney University
  • Diploma of Financial Planning | Kaplan

Experience

Alex has over 18 years’ experience in financial services advising both corporate clients and individuals on financial wellbeing, strategic financial advice, superannuation, employee benefits, insurance, investments and other financial services.

Jonathan Sherlock | Consultant

Jonathan is a Consultant and Financial Adviser. Prior to joining Harvest, Jonathan successfully ran family financial advice and corporate consultancy business. Jonathan has a background in law, employee benefits, financial advice and group insurance.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Law | Bond University
  • Bachelor of Commerce | Bond University
  • Diploma of Finance and Advanced Finance | Kaplan

Experience

Jonathan has over 25 years’ experience providing advice, financial education and financial coaching to individuals and business. Jonathan came to the financial advice industry from a background in law and therefore brings a rigorous attention to details to his advice and consulatancy work.