Your Privacy
Privacy is acknowledged as a fundamental human right. In Australia, the Privacy Act 1988 deals with your information privacy rights and how we must handle your personal information.
Personal information includes a broad range of information, or an opinion, that could identify an individual. What is personal information will vary, depending on whether a person can be identified or is reasonably identifiable in the circumstances.
For example, personal information may include an individual’s name, signature, address, phone number or date of birth, credit information, employee record information, photographs and related information. We do not seek to obtain or hold any “Sensitive information” as defined by the Act that includes information that generally relates to opinions held or other personal characteristics about an individual.
We are collecting personal information about you to provide you with our finance broking services. The information is required to assist you in preparing the loan application, and locating an appropriate provider. If your information is not provided we may not be able to find a suitable product for you, or complete other matters we are required to do by law.
Unless you instruct us not to, we may use your information to provide you with offers or information of other goods or services we or a third party can provide you with. We may disclose your information to other organisations to help us provide our services.
The types of organisations we may disclose your information to include credit providers, mortgage insurers, other mortgage intermediaries, valuers, and other relevant organisations that assist in the process.
Sometimes we will collect information about you from other sources as the Privacy Act 1988 permits. This may include public records, third parties or where we exchange information with your legal, financial advisers or other representatives. The law may also require us to collect personal information about you. For example, we may require your information to verify your identity under Australian Anti-Money Laundering law.
Storage of your Data
We may store your information in cloud or other types of networked or electronic storage and in hard copies. As electronic or networked storage can be accessed from various countries via the internet, we may not know in which country your information may be held. If your information is stored in this way, disclosures may occur in countries other than those listed.
Where your information is stored electronically, we will ensure that it is located in Australia but it may be hosted on third party systems on our behalf or to the extent necessary for the relevant third party to provide services to us. IT service providers will have access to some of our systems to provide support and maintenance.
We will use a number of standard security measures to protect your information including implementing and maintaining:
– Reasonable controls on access to your information; and
– Compliance with Australian data privacy laws and regulations; and
– Internal training and policies.
We will use reasonable endeavours to return, destroy or de-identify information after it is no longer required.
In addition, we may disclose your personal information to any other organisation that may wish to, or has acquired, an interest in your policy, or in our business.
Specific Authority
This Authority is outlined formally below:
Authority for an agent to obtain access to an individual’s credit information file held by a credit reporting agency (Privacy Act 1988), authorise us to:
Act as my/our agent in seeking access to my/our consumer Credit information file held by a credit reporting agency. This authority only applies to enquiries made by us in connection with:
• An application, or proposed application, by me/us for credit.
• My/our having sought advice in relation to existing credit.
You can gain access to the information we hold about you without charge, including the details of any preliminary credit assessment, by contacting us.
For further information about your privacy, you can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or visit their website at www.oaic.gov.au.