INVESTMENT RIGOUR. BOUTIQUE SERVICE.
Your independent investment governance function
Bridging the governance and investment gap for Australian Financial Services Licensees without dedicated resources.
“The purpose of investment governance is not regulatory compliance. It is better outcomes for the people whose financial futures depend on the quality of the advice they receive. “
WHY WE EXIST
Our Mission is to help small to medium Australian Financial Services Licensees achieve better investment outcomes for their clients through disciplined investment governance.
Since the Royal Commission, and pointedly since the Shield and First Guardian collapses, ASIC no longer accepts documented policies as proof of governance. It expects licensees to evidence that investment governance works in practice.
BNV Investment Partners is the independent function that builds that governance, sits on your investment committee as the voice that challenges managers and decisions, and produces the contemporaneous record ASIC wants to see. We exist for licensees who carry the obligation without a dedicated investment or governance team.
THE RESET
Buying a rating is not the same as governing a decision
A research rating is an input to a decision. It is not the decision. Shield and First Guardian followed a familiar pattern: licensees leaned on third-party ratings without their own assessment, and couldn't reconstruct how decisions were made when it mattered. Now the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms trade the safe-harbour checklist for documented professional judgement under s912A (the core general obligations for AFSLs i.e. to provide financial services efficiently, honestly and fairly, maintain adequate resources and risk management systems, and comply with financial services laws). With no prescribed process to follow, every licensee has to construct, and provide evidence of, its own assessment process.
2019
Royal Commission
Governance failures exposed
2021-24
ASIC intensifies
Evidence over policy docs
2025
Shield & First Guardian
Systemic failures
2026+
DBFO reforms
Judgement under s912A
WHAT WE DO
The investment governance function for your licence
Governance Framework
The architecture: framework, Investment Policy Statement, the Investment Committee charter, delegations and decision rights, escalation paths, documentation standards and calendar. The structure every investment decision runs through.
Your Investment Committee
We sit on your Investment Committee as the independent voice, challenging managers, testing decisions, offer technical investment input, and producing the papers and minutes that evidence it.
APL & Menu Governance
The judgement layer on top of research-house ratings. Approval criteria, scorecards, watchlist triggers, removal protocols, and the quarterly documented decision on what goes on, stays, or comes off. You will have your own assessment on the investment decision record, not just a research house’s rating report.
Conflicts Governance
Identified, registered, managed and escalated, decision by decision. We also provide independent oversight of managed-account and related-party arrangements. This is a live ASIC surveillance area — and the hardest thing for current market providers to look at independently and enforce accountability.
THE DIFFERENCE
We document and stand behind the investment decision record — what was decided, by whom, on what basis, against what criteria, and when.
Independence is structural, not just a marketing tag line
No product
We manufacture nothing and sell nothing. There is no BNV investment product for your APL to drift toward.
No rebates
We take no commissions or rebates from managers or platforms. You pay us — no one else does.
ENGAGEMENT MODEL
Two tiers, scoped to your needs not the size of your business
Core
The architecture and the quarterly review cycle: framework, IPS, IC charter, committee facilitation, conflicts, APL and the annual review. What a licensee needs to meet the expectation.
Enhanced
Everything in Core plus enhanced oversight: asset allocation, performance and risk analytics, stress testing, benchmarking, a governance dashboard and board reporting.
Going beyond the tick box
Our view on what the post-safe-harbour world asks of licensees — and the four questions ASIC will put to every one of them.
INSIGHTS
Most licensees call when something forces the question
Five minutes, eight short steps — a read on where your governance stands against ASIC's expectations, before anyone else asks.
GET IN TOUCH