At Oceania Finance we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This Privacy Policy and Credit Information Privacy Policy describes our current policies and practices in relation to the handling and use of personal information.
What information do we collect and how do we use it?
We will ask you for personal information when we assist you with your finance. Personal information may include any sensitive information (including health information) and may include any information you tell us about any vulnerability you may have. We use the information you provide to advise about and assist with your credit needs. We only provide your information to the companies with whom you choose to deal (and their representatives).
Personal information is collected directly from you (or an authorised representative) and may be used when:
- You enquire about or apply for a product or service offered by us or our participating providers
- We provide financial assistance or information
- We send you requested product information
- To enable us to manage your ongoing relationship with us (e.g. electronic communication, invoicing, client surveys etc.)
- You visit our website (including social media platforms)
- You contact us (by telephone, email, online form, mail, or via a social media channel)
- You enter or participate in any promotion, competition, giveaway, or any other offer with Oceania Finance.
We may occasionally notify you about promotions, new services and special offers, events or articles we think will be of interest to you. We may send you regular updates by email or by post. If you would rather not receive this information, email or write to us.
The information we collect will depend on what service you require and may include, your name, address, date of birth, employment details, contact details (e.g. email address, phone number), details of any references you supply, financial information and circumstances (e.g. assets, liabilities, credit history, bank details), and personal identification (e.g. passport, visa).
Website data
As a result of your visit to our website, we may collect and store information about your visit to this website including:
- the domain name and IP address of the computer from which you accessed the internet;
- the date and time you accessed the website;
- the internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our website;
- the pages you accessed while visiting the website;
- through the use of websites, software and internet tracking devices such as cookies, anonymous identifiers and session variables, we may also collect your email address.
Your internet service provider or the providers of your internet browser software may also collect such information for their own purposes. We are not responsible for the collection, storage and use of such information by these entities and refer you to their respective privacy policies.
Collection, Use and Disclosure of Credit-Related Information
As well as, and in addition to, the information collected under our General Privacy Policy, if you apply for credit from our parent company (Swoosh Finance, Ausfinancial Pty Ltd ACN 118 176 631) we will collect:
- Identification information
- Financial Information, including:
- income (from all sources including government)
- current employment status and recent history
- assets and liabilities
- expenses
- debts.
- Consumer credit liability information about the consumer credit accounts you have applied for or hold (whether with us or some other credit provider), including:
- type of account
- when and whether it was opened (and, if applicable, closed)
- if a credit account, then the maximum amount of credit approved
- other specific terms and conditions of the account.
- Repayment history information of consumer credit accounts you now hold (or that you have held with us or with some other credit provider), including:
- whether or not payment was made in any month it was due
- any late payments
- when the payment was ultimately paid
- Information about your credit application including:
- the type of credit, whether consumer or commercial
- the amount of credit sought.
- whether we made an information request about you to a Credit Reporting Body.
- Default information about you when you have failed to make a payment owed by you to us or some other credit provider which remains overdue for more than 60 days and which, after giving you notice as required by the Australian Privacy Laws, we may disclose to a Credit Reporting Body or which has already been disclosed to a Credit Reporting Body by another credit provider.
- Payment Information, which discloses that you have made an overdue payment whether to us or to another credit provider.
- New payment information about you as to the terms and conditions of any variation in the payments required under your Consumer credit contract with us or with another credit provider.
- Court proceedings information about a judgment of any Australian court that was made against you in relation to any credit that was provided to or applied for by you.
- Personal insolvency information which has been recorded in the National Personal Insolvency Index maintained by the Insolvency and Trustee Service of Australia relating to any bankruptcy, debt agreement, debt agreement proposal or a personal insolvency agreement executed by you, and any direction or order made under the Bankruptcy that relates to your property.
- Publicly available information about you that is not otherwise described above but which is relevant to your credit worthiness.
- Serious credit infringement information which relates to Consumer credit which we or some other credit provider has provided to you to the effect that you:
- fraudulently obtained Consumer credit;
- fraudulently evaded payments under a Consumer credit contract;
- are not able to be contacted at the last known addresses supplied to us or have not been in contact with us for 6 months; or
- are otherwise no longer intending to comply with your Consumer credit obligations.
- Credit worthiness or credit eligibility information, which we derive from the above information to produce tools, such as risk ratings and credit scores, to assist us to assess your application for Consumer credit from us. Such credit worthiness or credit eligibility information may be based on your Financial Information but will not include it in a recognizable form.
How credit-related information will be used
In addition to the above, if you apply to us for consumer credit or receive consumer credit from us, we will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in order to:
- assess your credit application and that of any proposed guarantors of your Consumer credit;
- manage your credit contract;
- consider any application for variation of your payments whether or not on the grounds of hardship;
- collect any debt or otherwise enforce any rights whether by court proceedings or otherwise arising under your Consumer credit contract;
- assist you if we consider you may be at risk of default;
- participate in the Credit Reporting system and provide information to the Credit Reporting Body/Bodies as described above;
- a prospective purchaser or other entity involved in the sale, transfer or restructure of our business assets;
- deal with any complaint by you through our Internal Dispute Resolution process or through our External Dispute Resolution scheme as described in our General Privacy Policy;
- Identify you as required by the Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorism Financing Act;
- meet our legal requirements including those under Australian Privacy Law and other laws to relevant authorities;
- assist other credit providers with the same purposes as permitted by Australian Privacy law such as disclosing credit information to them with your consent or where you have committed a serious credit infringement.
Disclosure of credit-related information
In order to obtain credit information about you from Credit Reporting Bodies we may be required to disclose to them credit information about you which we hold. Those Credit Reporting Bodies may then include that credit information about you in reports they provide to other credit providers.
We may also disclose your credit information to other credit providers on production of your written consent and at our discretion informed by our obligations under Australian Privacy Law.
This includes all the credit information described above with the exception of your Financial Information. It does, however, particularly include:
- Credit worthiness or credit eligibility information;
- Information about your credit application;
- Repayment information;
- Default information; and
- Serious Credit Infringement information.
The Credit Reporting Body/Bodies to which we may disclose your credit information are:
Illion (Australia) Website: www.creditcheck.illion.com.au
Equifax Pty Ltd Website: www.equifax.com.au
We refer you to the Privacy Policy of Illion and Equifax.
What if you don’t provide some information to us?
If you don’t provide us with full information, we can’t properly advise or assist you with your credit needs.
How do we hold and protect your information? We strive to maintain the reliability, accuracy, completeness, and currency of the personal information we hold and to protect its privacy and security. We keep personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected or to comply with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or document retention requirements
We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure, including:
- maintenance of a secure environment for storage of information whether in hard copy or in electronic form
- requiring that access to such information be confined to authorised personnel only
- using technology such as encryption and password protection to secure any information kept in electronic form.
We are not responsible for the security of any computer or other device which you use to access our website.
We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have collected it or as allowed under the law. It is important to us that you are confident that any information we hold about you will be treated in a way that ensures the protection of that information. Our commitment in respect of your information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles, as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
Disclosure of personal information
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others.
We may need to provide your information to our credit licensee (e.g. for administration and supervision activities), contractors who supply services to us (e.g. to handle mailings on our behalf), or to other companies in the event of a corporate sale, merger, reorganisation, dissolution or similar event. However, we will do our best to ensure that they protect your information in the same way that we do.
We may also provide your information to others if we are required to do so by law or under some unusual other circumstances which the Privacy Act permits.
Supply of personal information to overseas recipients
We do not intend to disclose your personal information overseas, and cannot foresee any circumstance in which the need to do so might arise. We do acknowledge, however, that as part of our backup system, some of your information might be stored overseas (for example if we use “cloud storage”), but the information will not be available to be accessed by any person overseas.
How can you access, update, or change your personal information
Upon receipt of your written request and enough information to allow us to identify the information, we will disclose to you the personal information we hold about you. We will also correct, amend or delete any personal information that we agree is inaccurate.
If you wish to access or correct your personal information, please write to us at:
Email: info@oceaniafinance.com.au
We do not charge for receiving a request for access to personal information or for complying with a correction request.
If we are unable to grant your access to personal, sensitive or credit information, we will give you our reasons in writing within a reasonable time. These may include where providing the information to you may:
- reveal personal information about another individual person;
- pose a threat to the health or safety of another individual person;
- not be permitted by law;
- reveal internal information of a commercially sensitive nature which is not required to be disclosed to you by Australian Privacy Law.
Your consent
By asking us to assist with your credit needs, you consent to the collection and use of the information you have provided to us for the purposes described above.
Tell us what you think
We welcome your questions and comments about privacy. If you have any concerns or complaints, please contact us at info@oceaniafinance.com.au.
Complaints
If you have any queries or complaints about our collection, use, or storage of your personal information (including a complaint relating to any failure by us to comply with our obligations under the credit reporting provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or under the Credit Reporting Privacy Code), or if you wish to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal information, please contact info@oceaniafinance.com.au. We will investigate and attempt to resolve any such complaint or dispute regarding the use or disclosure of your personal information.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA):
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Telephone: 1300 363 992
Mail: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA)
Telephone: 1800 931 678
Mail: GPO Box 3 Melbourne, VIC 3001
Fax: (03) 9613 6399 Email: info@afca.org.au
Changes to this Policy
From time to time, we may make changes to this General Privacy Policy because of:
- changes to the law;
- changes to technology;
- changes to our systems.
We will notify such changes on our website.