Frequently Asked Questions

Nucleus Wealth has opted to only use what the company sees as the basic building blocks of a quality diversified portfolio. 

You will only find in Nucleus Wealth portfolios variants of cash, Australian Federal Government Bonds and companies that sit in the MSCI World index, which are roughly the largest 1600 companies in the world, including about 65 of the largest Australian stocks. 

Nucleus Wealth is long only, and considers its portfolios to be the ‘Nucleus’ of a clients’ investments, making up the lower risk core of a portfolio.  Some investors choose to surround this core with higher risk investments that they (or other fund managers) manage themselves.

Nucleus Wealth looks after:

Tactical asset allocation: for example holding more cash and bonds in periods of market volatility

Stock selection: choosing which stocks to own

The Nucleus Wealth team reviews and makes decisions on all its portfolios on a daily basis.

Nucleus Wealth offers their flagship portfolios called Tactical Growth, Income and Accumulation, which can be accessed with a minimum investment amount of $10,000. Depending on the initial amount an investor wants to put into their investment portfolio, investors can be exposed to a diversified blend of Australian and International Exchange Traded Funds, direct Australian bonds, direct Australian shares and international shares, and can be blended to provide greater risk tailoring and have between 80 and 100 holdings.

Nucleus Wealth also offers just our stock selection services in full direct share portfolio’s called Core Australia and Core International, for those seeking to do their own tactical asset allocation.

These portfolios feature “Tactical Asset Allocation“, meaning the amount of Cash, Bonds and Shares in each portfolio is adjusted by Nucleus Wealth to take advantage of global macroeconomic themes and to help protect the portfolio during volatile market conditions.

Through our onboarding portal you can select any of the portfolios or a blend of several, or receive a recommendation of an appropriate blend for you using our free online advice tool.

These portfolios hold only Australian or International shares respectively, and do not feature Tactical Asset Allocation, meaning they are always fully invested and are not ‘de-risked’ at any time. This can mean higher levels of volatility compared with Tactical portfolios

Through our onboarding portal you can select any of the portfolios or a blend of several.

Yes, some company dividends come with franking. Each of our clients effectively has their own portfolio of shares, bonds and cash so the actual amount of franking differs from client to client, but all franking earned by the respective shares is applied directly back to that investor. The portfolio is essentially similar to having a portfolio on Commsec or some other broker, just managed on an ongoing basis by us.

Nucleus Wealth has targeted an all-in cost to clients of around 1% per annum or less, calculated daily and charged monthly in arrears on the balance a client invests with the company.

Nucleus Wealth does not charge a performance fee, and you can see the company’s view on this here.

Our financial advice is free, but limited to investment advice about which Nucleus Wealth products are best for your needs. 

Other than brokerage costs to buy or sell positions, there are no fees to open an account with us, and no fees to liquidate or sell down. 

There are two types of explicit fees:

An investment management fee

A platform administration fee

Investment Management Fee

Nucleus Wealth charges a flat 0.64% (or 64 basis points) investment management fee across all asset classes per annum. By charging the same across all asset classes, there is no perceived incentive to move from one to the other unless it benefits your portfolio.

Platform Administration Fee

There is an additional fee charged by Praemium, Nucleus Wealth’s platform partner, for running their administration, custody and trustee services. The Praemium fee starts at $65 per annum plus 0.33%.

Praemium uses a sliding scale that reduces admin fees as the investor’s account balance grows. There is no administration fee charged after investing $1,000,000. There is also the ability to aggregate multiple accounts as a family group to help take advantage of this tier pricing structure.

Included in the platform administration fees are fees to administer internationally domiciled securities. This amount already contributes to the $1,000,000 cap aggregation and is not isolated or treated differently.

Indirect Fees

There are also two types of indirect fees. These are fees that are embedded in the performance of portfolios you will not see explicitly.   When you sign up we show you how much we expect from these products. If you are comparing our fees to another investment fund, you may need to ask that fund for the indirect costs as many do not disclose them.

Two types of indirect fees:

Brokerage Cost

Exchange Traded Funds

Brokerage Cost

This fee is a one-off to establish your portfolio. Praemium incorporates a daily book-building process, which means that brokerage is minimised through group trading. Nucleus Wealth can typically transact for a tenth of the cost of traditional brokerage fees and the initial brokerage amount is estimated in the onboarding process. 

Exchange Traded Funds

Embedded in portfolios for smaller balance clients are Exchange Traded Funds (often called ETFs). These have fees embedded in them that you will not see as they are included in the price.

There may be an Indirect Cost component, which is the investment management fees of any exchange traded funds Nucleus Wealth may hold.

Superannuation

Superannuation accounts incur additional charges to pay for the Trustee. These include: $12 per month in fund accounting fees, and 0.03% per annum of fund balances up to $1,000,000, and 0 above this, for the Operational Risk Reserve levy.

Why is there a range of fees? Nucleus Wealth uses a Separately Managed Account structure. For most investors (that are not in a pension phase), a Separately Managed Account allows tax deductions that can lower the effective fee.

Like long-term investments, short-term investment fees are also charged monthly in arrears (at the end of month).

However, under 12 month investments are typically not ideal as there is too much market risk in comparison to sitting on it in cash.

Nucleus Wealth holds an array of different investment portfolios, some of which may hold Exchange Traded Funds. Exchange Traded Funds are sometimes an efficient way of lowering overall costs. We use these funds where buying the underlying assets directly would be cost-prohibitive or where you do not have enough funds to get an appropriate level of diversification.

In these scenarios, Nucleus Wealth makes an assessment of the returns available given the cost of investment before making any investment. Nucleus Wealth gains no monetary benefit from any Exchange Traded Fund and any fees from these funds are deducted from the returns published.

Yes.

Both larger-balance accounts or aggregated family accounts are eligible for administration fee discounts. The discounts apply on a progressive basis, much the same as income tax. So, different portions of balances attract a different level of fees. 

Praemium’s administration fees cap at a combined $1,000,000.00 for individual accounts or a combined family unit of up to 6 members. These 6 accounts can be of any type (super/investments/pension) and belonging to either one person or multiple family members. You can apply for family group aggregation using this form.

You can find more information on fees for managed accounts here (go to page 4) and fees for superannuation managed accounts here (go to page 17).

When you initially fund your account at Praemium they will wait until the funds in your account are equal to, or greater than, the initial investment total you specified in our onboarding process. 

Once your account gets to this amount, Praemium will send all your money off for trading in one go. This is important because there is a fixed fee component attached to your trading costs, so we want to limit the number of times you trade as much as possible.

If you would like to make additional contributions to your account, and plan to do so in multiple instalments close to each other, give us a call to discuss the best way to do this and make sure we can help you minimise your trading costs. 

For example if you add $20,000.00 and then a few days later add another $30,000.00, and the transaction cost is $50.00 each, you will end up paying $100.00. However, if you add $50,000.00 in one go, you will pay one transaction cost of $50.00.

Yes.

Nucleus Wealth offers all investment portfolios through personal superannuation through the product Nucleus Super, which has all the functionalities of a regular superannuation fund, but with typically more transparency and personal tailoring.

Through the online onboarding tool, you can also get a quote on Life and Total and Permanent Disablement insurance, which is a stand alone policy that sits alongside the investment and is portable. Nucleus Wealth does not take commission on the insurance component to help keep it affordable. More information on insurance below.

Once aboard, Nucleus Wealth sends you a prefilled form to give to your employer, where Nucleus Super can accept additional contributions much like any other fund.

Onboarding to create the client’s Nucleus Wealth superannuation account is easy and paperless, and the Praemium platform takes care of the rollover from the client’s previous superannuation fund electronically.

Your application gets sent to Praemium for approval. You do not need to do anything, this process usually takes 1 business day. Once approved, Nucleus Wealth will send you a form letter that you can use to inform your employer for future contributions. You will need to send this to your current employer. Typically this is the only additional task for you to perform.

Once Praemium has approved your application, it will initiate a rollover request to your existing superannuation fund. You do not need to do anything, this process usually takes 2-14 business days depending on your previous superannuation fund.

If there is a delay in the approval process, the Nucleus Wealth will liaise with Praemium to resolve and contact you with any information. A delay usually occurs when your details don’t match the details of your previous superannuation fund – for example the wrong date of birth. 

Once the rollover has been successful, Praemium will email you with your new Praemium login details (separate to their Nucleus Wealth portal login) along with further instructions.

You or your employer are not involved in the rollover process.

If you have applied to open a superannuation account with Nucleus Wealth and want to know your application status, please contact Nucleus Wealth’s Client Liaison Team on 1300 623 863, or email contact@nucleuswealth.com.

It typically takes 1 business day for Praemium to approve your application, then it typically takes another 5-10 business days for Praemium to receive the rollover once the application has been approved.

Yes. Nucleus Wealth offers Life, TPD & Income Protection Insurance through Metlife. They are one of the largest and most reputable providers in Australia.

Praemium needs an address for identification and verification purposes. 

However, if you are in the process of moving address, you can provide a government issued ID or driver’s license stating your old address, along with a utility bill with the same address, and this will be acceptable.

The Super Employer Contributions form will be automatically sent to you by the Nucleus Wealth team within 2 business days of your account being accepted by Praemium.

Whilst your Nucleus Super account application is being approved by Praemium, any contributions made by your employer during the transition period of rolling over will still be made into your existing superannuation account. 

If you are doing a full rollover, all the funds in your existing superannuation account, including the additional contributions made during the transition period, will eventually be rolled over. 

If you are doing a partial rollover, until Nucleus Wealth provides you with your new Separately Managed Account number for their new Nucleus Super account and Super Employer Contributions form to send to your employer to redirect your superannuation contributions, contributions made by your employer during the transition period will be made into your existing superannuation account. Usually these amounts are small. However, if you want these recent contributions moved into your new Nucleus Super account, you can just request Praemium to initiate another partial rollover. To initiate this request, email contact@nucleuswealth.com requesting to do another partial rollover and state the amount.

Yes, Nucleus Super offers pension accounts. 

At the ‘Applicant Stage’ towards the end of the application on the Nucleus Wealth onboarding portal, you  can opt to select a Personal Super Account Type of Pension instead of Accumulation. 

Once you have submitted your application, you will then need to make a phone booking with one of Nucleus Wealth’s financial advisors to organise the details of this account. 

That can be done from the Nucleus Wealth onboarding portal, or by calling 1300 623 863.

No.

A personal superannuation account can only be created for 1 person.

However, you can opt to open a Self Managed Super Fund account, which allows up to 4 people on the account.  More information on Self Managed Super Funds here and here.

Yes.

As you sign up on the onboarding portal, we will be able to notice that you want to open a Nucleus Super account through initial personal contributions if you do the following steps:

1. Select ‘personal super’ as the account type
2. Add all your information to complete the application
3. In the ‘Super Fund Entry’ tab: Fund Name should be ‘Other’, Custom Fund Name should be ‘Personal Contribution’, DO NOT tick ‘Is this a full rollover?’, Member Number should be ‘1’
4. Once you reach the ‘Final Review’ page and ‘Submit Application’, please inform us via email to contact@nucleuswealth.com that you have submitted a personal super application to be funded via contributions
5. Once the account has been approved and opened, we will send you your BPAY transfer details so that you can start funding via personal contributions

Once you have transferred funds into your account via BPAY (which takes around 2-4 business days), and once your funds have been received, your account moves into the execution stage.

The execution stage is where your funds are allocated into the portfolios chosen by you. 

During the execution process, Praemium initiates the trades on the stock market. The stock market opens at 10am and closes at 4pm Monday-Friday. Once trading is closed that day, the portfolios update and the next day you can view your positionings in your portal.

The whole process usually takes around 3-5 business days.

BPAY. BPAY is an electronic bill payment system that enables payments to be made and drawn between Nucleus Wealth and registered clients.

They vary from bank to bank. Many banks will allow you to increase your limit temporarily (say for one day) in order to transfer a larger amount. Many banks allow this through phone banking.

Alternatively, you are able to split a larger funding payment into smaller transactions across multiple days and once your account is fully funded, Nucleus Wealth will trade your portfolio.  For example, you could break up a $100,000 account funding transaction into 4 $25,000 funding payments over consecutive days, and once the full $100,000 is received, Nucleus Wealth will trade your portfolio.

Typically, fund transfers through BPAY take 2-4 business days.

Once you have completed your application on the Nucleus Wealth portal, we cross-check your details with GreenID to verify your identity. 

Once your details are verified, Praemium approves your application and creates a Separately Managed Account number, which is sent to you, as well as the BPAY number which enables the transfer of funds to occur.

Once you have transferred funds into your account via BPAY (which takes around 2-4 business days), and once your funds have been received, your account moves into the execution stage.

The execution stage is where your funds are allocated into the portfolios chosen by you. 

During the execution process, Praemium initiates the trades on the stock market. The stock market opens at 10am and closes at 4pm Monday-Friday. Once trading is closed that day, the portfolios update and the next day you can view your positionings in your portal.

The whole process usually takes around 3-5 business days.

Praemium’s cut-off is 9:30am AEST, so the instruction to sell your positions must be long enough before the cut-off time for Nucleus Wealth to process the instructions in Praemium to execute the sell trades. International stocks may take a couple of days longer, as foreign brokers are used and foreign markets may experience national holidays differently to the Australian market.

Interactive Brokers Australia is not a financial institution which carries on banking business. Thus, Interactive Brokers Australia is not classified as an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI).

Because Interactive Brokers Australia is not an authorised depository-taking institution all Interactive Brokers Australia client money is held in bank accounts (Client Money Accounts held in Trust) at authorised deposit-taking institutions. 

This segregation is a requirement by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) of Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) holders. Interactive Brokers Australia, as an AFSL holder, fully complies with these principles. By properly segregating the customer’s assets, if no money or stock is borrowed and no futures positions are held by the customer, then the customer’s assets are available to be returned to the customer in the event of a default by or bankruptcy of the broker. Client money is not invested by Interactive Brokers Australia, and is at all times held in these Client Money Accounts held in Trust. In addition, Interactive Brokers Australia does not hold any excess amount of its own money in these Client Money Accounts held in Trust.

Clients of Interactive Brokers Australia may be able to access compensation available under the National Guarantee Fund (NGF) in circumstances prescribed in Division 4 of Part 7.5 of the Corporate Regulations, including losses resulting from the failure of a market participant, but excluding losses resulting from the decreases in the market value of financial products. 

Interactive Brokers Australia is part of the Interactive Brokers Group of companies, a public company listed in the US. Please note that on a consolidated basis, the Interactive Brokers Group has an equity capital that exceeds US$9 billion. For more information on Interactive Brokers Group Financial Strength and Customer Assets Handling under Interactive Brokers Australia, please refer here.

You are probably using a work laptop with high security, an old browser or using an adblocker. You should try logging into your portal account using a personal device and see if you can click the verification button.

You just need to deposit more money through BPAY and the amount invested will update in your portal after 3-5 business days.

Send an email to contact@nucleuswealth.com using your registered email address we have on file for you with the following information:

1) Please state the SMA account number we will withdraw from

2) Please confirm your bank details we have on file for you that we will be paying out to (Institution, BSB, Account Name, Account Number)

3) Please state your reason for withdrawal

4) Please state your partial withdrawal amount

There is no other form you need to complete.

Upon receiving your reply, Nucleus Wealth will instruct the withdrawal within a business day, trade the following market day and money returned usually by 7 business days.

Send an email to contact@nucleuswealth.com using your registered email address we have on file for you with the following information:

1) Please state the SMA account number we will withdraw from

2) Please confirm your bank details we have on file for you that we will be paying out to (Institution, BSB, Account Name, Account Number)

3) Please state your reason for withdrawal

4) Please confirm you want to make a full withdrawal. Note that processing a full withdrawal will trigger account closure. If you wish to reinvest with us we will have to create a new application and account for you

There is no other form you need to complete. 

There are no exit fees for closing your account, just trading costs for selling down your investment portfolio.

Upon receiving your reply, Nucleus Wealth will instruct the withdrawal within a business day, trade the following market day and money returned usually by 7 business days.

Unfortunately withdrawing all your funds will trigger Praemium to close your account, meaning you will not be able to fund this same account in the future. However, we would of course welcome you back as a client and already have a lot of your details on file. So opening a new account in the future would be a relatively simple process.

No.

You will need to liquidate your Individual account and then make a new application for your Family Trust account. If you have holdings in your Separately Managed Account (SMA) as an Individual, you cannot simply transfer ownership to a Trust account (including a Family Trust). If you had a Trust SMA set up with us and you wanted to do that, we would be required to sell down your holdings in the Individual account, which would realise a profit or loss to you (included in your personal tax return for that financial year).  Then the funds could be paid out to the bank account we have on file for the individual account.  If you would like to use those funds to pay into your trust account, you are free to do so.  Once the trust account is set up, you will be emailed the BPAY details.

No, you can use the same portal login. Once you are logged into the portal, go to the ‘Account Type’ page, select the different account type you wish to open, and begin the application process.

If you have a joint account and also want to have two individual accounts, you will need to create a separate login for one of the accounts.

Nucleus Wealth’s platform partner, Praemium, has one of the best reporting systems in the business, so much that it is used by major banks. At the end of the financial year, you will be provided with a full, audited tax report that can be easily used to manage your own tax affairs. 

The typical figures your accountant needs, such as realised capital gains, income, distributions and franking credits are provided in much the same way as a share broker end of year report.

The statement delivery dates are as follows:

Managed Account Annual Statements: Annual statements are issued to investors in August via Investor Portal. A notification will be sent to investors when this statement is available.

SuperSMA Annual/Member Statement: SuperSMA member statements are issued to investors in September via Investor Portal. A notification will be sent to investors when this statement is available.

Managed Account Tax Statements: Tax statements containing information required to submit a tax return are issued to investors in October via Investor Portal. In order to have the most accurate tax information, these statements are issued once all trust information for the account has been received. A notification will be sent to investors when this statement is available.

No, your Nucleus Wealth portal login is different to Praemium’s online account login as they are two separate platforms. However, when creating the Praemium login, your username should be the same, which is your email address.

Initial Trading for Non-superannuation Accounts

When you initially fund your non-superannuation account at Praemium, Praemium will wait until the total funds in your account are equal to, or greater than, the initial investment total you specified in our onboarding process.

Once your non-superannuation account gets funded to your initial investment total amount, Praemium will send all your money off for trading in one go. This is important as there is a fixed fee component attached to your trading costs, so we want to limit the number of times you trade wherever possible to keep your costs as low as possible.

For example, if Praemium didn’t do this, and you deposited $20,000 into your account and then a few days later deposited another $30,000 into your account, (and for example the transaction cost of $50 is charged each time an amount comes in and trades), you would end up paying $100 over two transactions. However, if you deposit $50,000 in one go, you will pay one transaction cost of $50. But when you specify your initial investment amount of $50,000, no matter how many deposits you make, your account will not trade for the first time until that $50,000 is met. 

Initial Trading for Superannuation Accounts

Initial trading for superannuation accounts works a bit differently.

If you are consolidating your superannuation and expecting multiple rollovers to arrive in your Nucleus Wealth account, instead of waiting for all the rollovers to arrive before trading all at once, Praemium will trade each set of rollovers as soon as they land. This has been set up to limit your superannuation funds from missing out on the potential upside of market movements.

Maximum Trading Costs

In order to minimise brokerage costs, Praemium conduct a daily book-building process. This allows them to net off trades going in opposite directions, which reduces your trading costs. As such, the initial brokerage amount estimated in the onboarding process represents the maximum trading cost we expect your account to incur.

Additional Contributions

If you would like to make additional contributions to your account and plan to do so in multiple instalments close to each other, or if you are planning on adding ongoing funds over a long period of time, please do not hesitate to give us a call to discuss the best way to do this and we will look into the options available to help you minimise your trading costs.

The portfolios all hold exchange traded securities and AUD cash, and hence valuation updates are on a daily basis.

Although Nucleus Wealth does offer the ability for you to change your splits/weighting between portfolios, we do not offer the ability on the client portal for you to select one portfolio to allocate new money. 

Contact us on 1300 623 863 or email contact@nucleuswealth.com to request to allocate new funds to your chosen portfolio. Once your request has been granted, we will direct your new funds to 1 portfolio from our back end and send you a confirmation email once completed. Upon your initial request, you should specify if you would like this done for all new funds going forward, or if it’s just a one off.

Log in to the Investor Portal in Praemium. In the top right, click on the drop down box and select “Status/Refresh”.  Your account balances should now be reflected correctly.

Send an email from your registered email address instructing your request to contact@nucleuswealth.com.

Specify:

1. The amount you wish to temporarily move to cash, along with a reason for the transfer
2. Your SMA account number

Once received, Nucleus Wealth will fulfil the request in 1-2 business days. Any amount is fine as all investments are held in highly liquid markets.

All dividends are accepted in cash. Portfolios automatically default to reinvesting dividends, but this can be turned off by sending us a request to contact@nucleuswealth.com

For investment accounts, if you request to not have dividends reinvested,  your dividends will be swept into the bank account we have on file for you. Funds will be swept 24 – 48 hours after the dividends are received.

For superannuation accounts, if you request to not have dividends reinvested, we would instruct Praemium to direct your dividends into a cash portfolio, which would accumulate until you instruct us to allocate it to an investment at a later date or roll it into another superannuation fund.

If your SMA account is still open (active), dividends tend to be deposited into your account when they’re received and are automatically reinvested in your portfolios. However, if you wish to receive periodic income from your account, please send your request to contact@nucleuswealth.com and one of our team members will assist you.

If you have closed your SMA account, however, any final dividends will be paid at the beginning of the following month (i.e. if the dividends were received in mid February, then the payment will be made at the beginning of March).

Updating your mobile number:

• Email contact@nucleuswealth.com your request to update your mobile number
• In the email, include your old mobile number, then include your new mobile number
• Email us using the email address that we have on file for you
• Note that the updated mobile number will be used to send verification codes as you log in to your Nucleus Wealth client portal
• One of our Nucleus Wealth client support will confirm with you once your details have been updated

Updating your email address:

• Email contact@nucleuswealth.com your request to update your email address
• In the email, include your current email address, then include your new email address
• Email us using the current email address you have on file with us, and CC your new email address in your request
• If your old email address is already deactivated, give us a call to work through the security questions and make the change
• Note that the updated email address will be your new Nucleus Wealth portal and Praemium portal userID to login. However, your Nucleus Wealth portal and Praemium portal logins are separate, so your passwords may not match
• One of our Nucleus Wealth client support will confirm with you once your details have been updated

Updating your postal and residential addresses:

• Email contact@nucleuswealth.com your request to update your postal and/or residential address
• Specify if your postal address is different from your residential address, and which type of address you wish to update
• In the email, include your current address, then include your new address
• Email us using your current email address you have on file with us
• Attach a utility bill or other document that displays your full name, mobile number and new address
• One of our Nucleus Wealth client support will confirm with you once your details have been updated

Praemium typically produce an annual statement in August and then a tax report in September/October. See https://www.praemium.com/resources/preparing-for-tax-year-end/ for more details.

Interactive Brokers produce a range of different reports that you can use for your tax.

Note that in Interactive Brokers reports, Short term (or ST) Gain indicates assets which have been owned for less than one year. Long term (or LT) Gain indicates assets which have been owned for more than one year and are likely to be eligible for the 50% capital gains tax discount.

We use DASH only for personal superannuation accounts. Investors do not have to fill in a tax report for personal superannuation.