Our Privacy Policy
WHO ARE WE?
‘We’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refer to Australian Financial Holdings Pty Ltd ABN 30 630581 298, Australian Credit Licence
516770 and our related businesses.
OUR COMMITMENT TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY
At Australian Financial we understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document
sets out how we manage and store your information in accordance with our privacy policy.
We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have
collected it for or as allowed under the law. 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.
Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles for the
protection of personal information, as set out in the Privacy Act and any other relevant law.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
When we refer to personal information, we mean information from which you are personally identifiable.
The kinds of personal information we may collect about you include;
name, date of birth, address, account details, occupation and any other information we may need to
identify you.
If you are applying for finance, we may also collect the ages and number of your dependants and
cohabitants, the length of time at your current address, your employment details and proof of earnings
and expenses.
WHY WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We collect personal information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing that
finance. We may also collect your personal information for the purposes of direct marketing and managing our
relationship with you.
DO WE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
To enable a successful business relationship, we may disclose your personal information to other organisations
that provide products or services used by Australian Financial.
The types of organisations to which we may disclose your personal information include other mortgage
intermediaries, lenders, valuers, lenders mortgage insurers, surveyors, accountants, credit reporting bodies,
recoveries firms, debt collectors, employers, and lawyers.
We may also disclose your personal information to any other organisation that may have or is considering
having an interest in your finance, or in our business.
Prior to disclosing any of your personal information to another person or organisation, we will take all
reasonable steps to ensure that:
A. the person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to
our commitment, or
B. you have consented to us making the disclosure.
HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Where reasonable and practical we will collect your personal information directly from you. We may also
collect your personal information from credit reporting bodies, Finance Brokers and other parties such as
accountants and lawyers.
CREDIT INFORMATION
Credit information is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance and may
include any finance that you have outstanding, your repayment history and any defaults. Usually, credit
information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and credit reporting bodies.
We may collect the following kinds of credit information and exchange this information with credit reporting
bodies and other entities:
credit liability information being information about your existing finance which includes the name of the
credit provider, whether the credit provider holds an Australian Credit Licence, the type of finance, the
day the finance is entered into, the terms and conditions of the finance, the maximum amount of finance
available, and the day on which the finance was terminated;
repayment history information which is information about whether you meet your repayments on time;
information about the type of finance that you are applying for;
default and payment information; and
court proceedings information.
We may also seek publicly available information and information about any serious credit infringement that
you may have committed.
We exchange this credit information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing
that finance.
NOTIFIABLE MATTERS
The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit information.
We exchange your credit information with credit reporting bodies. We use the credit information that we
exchange with the credit reporting body to assess your creditworthiness, assess your application for
finance and managing your finance.
If you fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any finance that we have provided or arranged,
or you have committed a serious credit infringement then we may disclose this information to a credit
reporting body.
To access your personal or credit information please see the heading ‘Access and correction to your
personal and credit information’.
If you have fallen victim to fraud you may inform the appropriate credit reporting body. For a period of 21 days
after the credit reporting body receives your notification the credit reporting body must not use or disclose
that credit information. You can contact any of the following credit reporting bodies for more information:
veda.com.au,
dnb.com.au, or
experian.com.au.
DIRECT MARKETING
We may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, offers, changes
to our organisation, new products or services being offered.
To unsubscribe from future marketing information;
If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such
information by calling 1300 888 684 or by writing to us at GPO Box 2774 Melbourne VIC 3001.
If you have received unwanted direct marketing via email, then you may also use the unsubscribe
function. We will take all reasonable steps to meet your request at the earliest possible opportunity.
UPDATING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. During the life of
our business relationship we may ask you to inform us if any of your personal information has changed. It is
your responsibility to ensure that Australian Financial has the most accurate, and up to date contact
information to ensure you are receiving vital correspondence.
If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, you may contact us on 1300 888 684.
BUSINESS WITHOUT IDENTIFYING YOU
It is necessary for us to identify you in order to successfully do business with you, however, where it is lawful
and feasible to do so, we will offer you the opportunity of doing business with Australian Financial without
providing personal information, for example, if you making inquiries about general interest rates or current
promotional offers.
ACCESS AND CORRECTION TO YOUR PERSONAL AND CREDIT INFORMATION
We will provide you with access to the personal and credit information we hold about you. You may request
access to any of the personal information we hold about you at any time. We may charge a fee for our costs of
retrieving and supplying the information to you.
Depending on the type of request that you make we may respond to your request immediately, otherwise we
will endeavour to respond to your request within seven days as we may need to contact other entities to
properly investigate your request.
Situations in which we are not required to provide you with access to your personal or credit information, for
example; if the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings.
If we deny you access to the personal or credit information, we hold about you then we will provide you will an
explanation.
If any of the personal or credit information we hold is incorrect 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.
If we refuse to correct personal or credit information, we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting
the information.
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 will never use a government identifier in order to identify you.
HOW SAFE AND SECURE IS YOUR INFORMATION THAT WE HOLD?
At Australian Financial we take every precaution to safely manage and store your personal information. We
may store your personal information in paper and electronic form. We may use cloud storage to store the
credit information we hold about you. The cloud storage and the IT servers may be located outside Australia.
We will take reasonable steps to protect any personal and credit information from misuse. Please keep in
mind that no information transmitted over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. We will
endeavour to protect your personal information; however, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any
information you transmit to us or receive from our online products or services.
COMPLAINTS
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 and the Credit Reporting Code, you may contact our complaints officer on
03 9222 5600.
We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days.
If you are dissatisfied with the response from our company, you may make a complaint to the Privacy
Commissioner which can be contacted on either www.oaic.gov.au or 1300 363 992.
FURTHER INFORMATION
For further privacy information, please refer to the Australian Privacy Commissioner’s Website
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles/
CHANGE IN OUR PRIVACY POLICY
We are constantly reviewing our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations.
Technology is regularly changing, as is the law and market place practices.
As a consequence, we may change this privacy policy from time to time or as the need arises.
You may request this privacy policy in an alternative form.