FAQ

Rather than 100’s of brokers individually working with all of the Insurance and fund management companies to determine the pricing variables for the products that they sell, ClearChoice will do this work once and for everyone. Furthermore, we will do this on an on-going basis to ensure that we always have the most up-to-date and accurate set of charging available for all products.

Using MyCharges.ie, each brokerage will be able to login and select which companies and which products they sell. If you have special terms or your remumeration rates are slightly different that the provider defaults, you can override the default. With just a few clicks, our system will generate a complete schedule of remuneration that will automatically be displayed on your website in line with the Brokers Ireland recommended format.

What is displayed on your website will therefore be completely unique to your business and you will have complete on-going control to tweak and manage as necessary.

More importantly, your on-going administrative overhead will be negligable. The team at ClearChoice will be constantly monitoring remuneration changes from all of the providers. Once we become aware of a particular providers charging or remuneration structures changing, your website will automatically be updated (without needing any intervention from you!).

Yes! Our solution has been designed to work with all websites. For websites based around Wordpress, we have a plugin that can be installed with a few clicks. For all other websites, we have a Javascript plugin that can also be installed in a matter of minutes.

Yes. You have a few options. You may use our system to automatically generate a web page that can be made available on a device within your office for customers to review. Alternatively, or in addition, our system will allow you to generate a PDF version of the customised charging and remuneration structures that are unique to your business. You may choose to print this and make a copy available in your office for your customers to review or provide it in a digital format to your customers. When changes occur to pricing or remuneration that effect the products that you sell, we will automatically notify you by e-mail of the change and provide you with an updated version of the PDF.

A very small amount of technical knowledge will be required initially to integrate the ClearChoice plugin with your website. We will provide very simple and clear instructions on what you need to do to accomplish this. Furthermore, we will be on-hand to assist where we can.

Yes, of course we can. Please contact us at support@clearchoice.ie and we will either walk you through the process or take care of it for you.

Yes, the solution integrates seamlessly with your existing website. It will use the same colours and look completely natural to your customers. If your website is setup to work on mobile devices, the solution will work seamlessly on mobile devices too. That said, if you do want to tweak the style or colours of how the remuneration appears on your website, we have catered for that too. Once you login to your MyCharges.ie account, you can edit many of the visual settings that control how the information looks when displayed on your website.

The ClearChoice team have assembled commission information from close to 200 different providers accross 100's of product variations. Once you login to your MyCharges.ie account, you simply need to point-and-click to select the providers and products that are relevant to your organisation.

If you have special terms or your remumeration rates are slightly different that the provider defaults, you can override the default. With just a few clicks, our system will generate a complete schedule of remuneration that will automatically be displayed on your website in line with the Brokers Ireland recommended format.

The provision requires that you make available an exact list of all your highest upfront and recurring commissions across all providers you deal with. This should be made available to your customers in your office and on your website. These information provided must include all upfront, recurring and claw-back and non monetary benefits.

The Central Bank has advised that it envisages a webpage, with links to the products available from each provider and maximum and clawback commission rates for each product. This is to be a combination of all factors of commission including any upfront, recurring, clawback and non-monetary benefit as well as any specific terms. The Central Bank does not wish to see ranges. The Central Bank also notes it is what you take at a maximum level, not what you mostly take or take on average.

You must have an accessible file online or on a drive to be readily available for inspection or digestion for any party. This should be in a format that is ready for circulation and kept up to date as new products come on stream, or existing products are edited or removed from the market. For example one Life Office has 4 savings contracts with differing commission options and one other Life Office has 6 different Buyout bond commission options.

Yes, they are aware.

They can simply survey a Brokerage website remotely as part of their desk based themed inspection process. This process would not need to be on site, with staff capable of reviewing a number of sites quite quickly. Consistency from industry perspective is key, particularly if there are varying levels of consistency, information and quality of presentation.

The Central Bank have made it clear that they want to see detailed remuneration information presented on brokers websites. We all know that this will be a significant amount of information (even for brokerages with only a handful of agencies). That’s why our solution will allow you to set out a plain English description of your charging ethos and the key charges that apply to individual products that you sell.

The intent is that this approach will present a more customer friendly and digestible up-front summary. Naturally, if customers wish to do so, they will be able to explore down to the detail level of all of the maximum charging options per product per provider. Our expectation is that most customers will not actually do this. For the time being Brokers Ireland have advised ClearChoice/Brokerages not to display every breakdown or matrix of each product and the linked commissions, allocations, AMC’s etc.

No, their obligations around CPC 116 predominantly relate to corporate entertainment etc. This is a Brokerage/intermediary obligation within the CPC.