Frequently Asked Questions

Tactical Portfolios 

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 by using Nucleus Wealth’s free online advice tool.

4 Tactical Portfolios: Tactical Foundation, Tactical Growth, Tactical Accumulation, Tactical Income

Core Share Portfolios

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.

2 Core Portfolios: Core International, Core Australia

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 has a tactically managed portfolio that serves clients looking to invest between $35,000 and $200,000, called Tactical Foundation which uses cash, bonds, Australian shares and international exchange traded funds (ETFs) and around 35 holdings.

For those looking to invest above $200,000, Nucleus Wealth offers their flagship portfolios called Tactical Growth, Income and Accumulation. These use a diversified blend of direct international shares instead of exchange traded funds, 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 have 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. 

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

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

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.

Brokerage Cost

Brokerage costs are charged when your account trades. 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.

Either aggregated family accounts or higher balances are eligible for administration fee discounts. The discounts apply as a bracket system, much the same as income tax. So, different portions of balances attract a different level of fees.

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.

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

Nucleus Wealth has spent considerable time in choosing an insurance partner that offers a sound and reliable insurance solution for Nucleus Wealth clients. Alongside opening a Nucleus Super superannuation account, clients are now offered commission-free personal (Life and Total & Permanent Disability) insurance cover through the insurance company Metlife. 

Metlife has 150 years of experience in personal insurance, and currently insures over 2.6 million Australians as the 3rd biggest group life insurer in the country. Metlife’s insurance is fully underwritten so that clients go through a screening process, which requires clients to go through a tele-application. A client can choose to have Life only, TPD only or Life with linked TPD cover. 

You must have a minimum of $35,000 in your superannuation account to avail insurance. Insurance can also be availed later down the track if you do not want it at the beginning of opening a superannuation account with Nucleus Wealth.

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.

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, there is a tiered fee and administration fees from multiple accounts can be combined to reduce fees.

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.

BPAY. BPAY is an electronic bill payment system which 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.

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

Once you have completed your application on the Nucleus Wealth portal, Praemium cross checks 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 money needs to be in your account long enough for Nucleus Wealth to give instructions to Praemium to execute the trade. International stocks will be sold that night.

All dividends are accepted in cash, then reinvested in the portfolio according to model weights, so this may result in the purchase of stocks other than the ones paying the dividend.

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.

You will just need to send through an instruction to Nucleus Wealth’s central inbox, contact@nucleuswealth.com. Once received, Nucleus Wealth will instruct the payment back to your bank account. Any amount is fine and all investments are held in highly liquid markets.

Depending on how much market activity is required, the transfer usually takes between 4 and 6 business days to be returned to your account.

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 have a sell price for the Individual account (to realise a profit or loss).

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, usually around September, 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.

Any drawdowns or account closure requests can be sent to contact@nucleuswealth.com. Nucleus Wealth can instruct the closure within a business day, traded the following market day and money returned usually in about 6 business days.

Yes.

Nucleus Wealth can create a link up that can be sent through to you. We offer a $50 movie card (or another form of cashcard) or you can opt for a $50 donation to a charity of your choice for referrals that sign up using the link.

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.

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 account to allocate new money. 

Contact us on 1300 623 863 or email contact@nucleuswealth.com to request to allocate new funds to your chosen account. 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.