Privacy Policy
This privacy policy relates to our management of personal information about borrowers and consumers, including your personal information collected in connection with a credit application, or a credit facility.
Our commitment to protect your privacy
Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles (as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)) and any other applicable law.
We understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document sets out our policy on how we collect and manage personal information we hold about you and what we do with that information.
It is important to us that you are confident that any personal information we hold about you will be treated in a way which ensures protection of your personal information in accordance with law.
What is personal information?
How do we collect your personal information?
If you deal with us directly, we generally collect personal information directly from you, such as in person, on the phone or electronically. This includes your interaction with our website, online application functionalities (if any), social media channels, etc.
We may also collect your personal information in other ways, including:
- From your joint applicants, co-applicants or guarantors or proposed guarantor;
- From the loan applicant if you are the guarantor or proposed guarantor;
- From your employer, real estate agent or any other referees;
- From third parties such as social media platforms, marketing websites, related companies, credit reporting bodies, lenders, law enforce agencies, other government entities and identity verification service providers;
- From your representatives, e.g. solicitors, accountants, conveyancers, builders, agents; and
- When legally required to do so - for example, in the provision of specific credit services.
We may collect credit reporting information and credit eligibility information about you from credit reporting bodies and credit providers respectively if you expressly authorise us to do so in writing as part of us providing you with credit assistance services.
What personal information do we collect and hold?
We may collect the following types of personal information:
- Your name, date of birth, qualifications and any other information and documents used to verify your identity;
- Your contact details such as physical address, email address and telephone number;
- Your credit information and financial information including your tax file number and bank account, superannuation or insurance policy information, credit reports from credit reporting bodies, income and expenses, assets and liabilities and credit and loan repayment history including any defaults; and
- Other information that you may submit as part of a finance application, such as the age and number of your dependents and cohabitants, length of time at current address, your employment details and proof of earnings and expenses;
- Information about loans and finance products that relate to you, including transactional information, audits, investigation, complaints or enquiries relating to such loans and finance products;
- Additional information relating to you that you provide to us, whether directly through our websites, or indirectly through use of our websites or online presence; and
- Information you provide to us through our contact channel or customer surveys
- Some of the personal information we collect about you may be sensitive information, such as:
- Information relating to your memberships in trade or professional associations or trade unions;
- Your criminal record; and
- Your health information.
For what purpose do we collect your personal information
We collect (and hold, use and disclose) your personal information for a number of purposes:
- Carrying on our business and providing our products and services (including credit assistance to you);
- Managing our relationship with you and to communicate with you;
- Giving you information about loan products or related services;
- Considering whether you are eligible for a loan or lease product or any related service you requested;
- Assisting you to prepare an application for a loan or lease product;
- Conducting business processing and administrative functions;
- Performing our obligations to third parties involved in your loan or lease product (such as lenders and financiers), so as to assist them in assessing your application or managing their relationship with you;
- Referring you to providers of insurance and other services (such as moving utility connections);
- Managing our risks (such a fraud investigation and prevention) and meeting our legal and regulatory obligations;
- Where permitted by law, for the purposes of direct marketing and offering you other products and services; and
- Complying with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in co-operation with any governmental authority of any country.
- If you do not provide us with the personal information or allow us to collect your personal information, some or all of the following may happen:
- We may not be able to provide our products and services to you, either to the same standard or at all;
- We may not be able to perform our obligations to lenders or financiers, and in turn it means your application for credit or lease may not be able to be processed;
- We may not be able to provide you with information about products and services that you may want, including information about special promotions;
To whom do we disclose your personal information?
We may disclose your personal information:
- To the mortgage aggregator through whom we may submit loan or lease applications to lenders or lessors on the mortgage aggregator’s panel;
- The Australian Credit Licence holder that authorises us to engage in credit activities;
- To industry bodies, valuers, your employers, referees, identity verification services or credit reporting agencies;
- To prospective or actual lenders, lessors, mortgage insurers or other intermediaries in relation to your finance requirements;
- Service providers, agents, contractors and advisers that assist us to conduct our business;
- To associated businesses that may want to market products to you;
- To companies that host our ICT infrastructure, or provides cloud services that we use to hold or process your personal information;
- To anybody who represents you, such as finance brokers, real estate agent, conveyancer, lawyers, accountants or other relevant professional;
- To your guarantors or prospective guarantors;
- To auditors, law enforcement agencies and regulators;
- To anyone, where you have provided us consent;
- Where we are required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth); or
- To investors, agents or advisers, or any entity that has an interest in our business.
Do we disclose your personal information to anyone outside Australia?
We may disclose personal information to our related bodies corporate and third party suppliers and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.
Some of the recipients and systems hosting your personal information may be located outside Australia, Bangladesh and the United States of America. Your personal information may be stored in cloud servers located outside of Australia. As such, information, electronic or networked, can be accessed remotely.
Direct marketing
From time to time, we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company with whom we are associated.
If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us, you may at any time decline to receive such information by reaching out to us. If the direct marketing is by email you may also use the unsubscribe function.
Updating and accessing your personal information
It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. During our professional relationship with you we may ask you to inform us if any of your personal information has changed.
If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, you may contact us (refer to the “contact us” section below). We will rely on you to ensure the information we hold about you is accurate or complete.
Requesting access to your personal information
You have rights under the Privacy Act to request access to the personal information we hold about you at any time. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing it (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you).
Depending on the type of request that you make we may respond to your request immediately, otherwise we will aim to respond to you within 30 days of receiving your request.
There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal information, for example, if the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, or if your request is vexatious.
Correcting your personal information
If any of the personal information we hold about you is incorrect, inaccurate or out of date you may request that we correct the information. If appropriate we will correct the personal information at the time of the request, otherwise, we will provide an initial response to you within seven days of receiving your request. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal information within 30 days.
We may need to consult with other entities as part of our investigation.
Using government identifiers
If we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file number, we do not use or disclose this information other than required by law. We do not adopt any government identifier as our identifier of you.
Business without identifying you
In most circumstances it will be necessary for us to identify you to successfully do business with you, however, where it is lawful and practicable to do so, we will offer you the opportunity of doing business with us without providing us with personal information.
How safe and secure is your personal information that we hold?
We will otherwise take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information in paper and electronic form. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply via internet will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet.
Complaints about Privacy
If you are dissatisfied with how we have dealt with your personal information, or you have a complaint about our compliance with the Privacy Act, please contact us directly via email.
We will take necessary steps to investigate and address your concerns. If the issue you have raised is not resolved to your satisfaction you should contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at:
Ph: 1300 363 992
Post: GPO Box 5218,
Sydney, NSW 2001
You can learn more about the Privacy Act and your rights at www.privacy.gov.au
Changes to our privacy policy
We may revise this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes to the law or market practice. To the extent permitted by law, any revised privacy policy will apply both to information we already have about you at the time of the change, and any personal information collected after the change takes effect.