Collecting personal information about you
The National Privacy Principles  

Private sector organisations, must, by law, comply with the National Privacy Principles ("NPPs"). We are bound by and, as required by the Privacy Act 1988, will comply with the NPPs from that date.

We only collect personal information that is necessary for us to carry out our functions and activities which consist of the origination and administration of loans and related activities. If any personal information we need are not provided, we may not be able to provide you the relevant product or service. Where practicable, we will collect personal information directly from you, however, at times we may need to collect personal information from other parties as set out below. The kinds of personal information we collect and hold will depend upon your dealings with us and the circumstances in which it was collected, but may include:

• information you provide to us when applying for a loan or when you offer to guarantee a loan. This information will include your name, address, occupation, date of birth and contact details;  
• financial information from you, your employer, accountant or financial adviser, about you such as your financial position. This may include details of your salary/wage or investment income;
• information obtained from credit checks carried out during the loan approval process (but only if you have authorised such checks to be carried out);
• information about individuals associated with or employed by organisations with which we do business in the course of our activities, including solicitors, mortgage insurers, valuers and mortgage managers; and

• information about individuals from publicly available information or government agencies.

We do not collect or hold any sensitive personal information about individuals. This includes personal information relating to religious views, ethnicity, political opinion, criminal record, health information and sexual preference.

We are aware of your identity when you log on to Internet Banking. However if you browse our website, we do not collect any information other than statistical information such as the number of visitors to our website and the most frequently viewed pages, and information for a systemic log of our website – none of this information contains personal information.

Using and disclosing your personal information

• solicitors, accountants and valuers;
• mortgage insurers;
• the trustee of any associated mortgage fund;
• government agencies (such as those which administer land titles and revenue or foreign investments);
• credit reporting agencies and mercantile agents;
• organisations undertaking reviews of the accuracy and completeness of our information; and
• other organisations which participate in funding, providing and administering your loan or the loan you have guaranteed, such as the mortgage manager and trustee of the fund from which the loan is sourced.

• authorised organisations providing confidential mailing services, maintenance of our information technology systems, and printing of our standard documents and correspondence; and
• anyone else as required or allowed by law or where you have otherwise consented.

• tell you about our products and services, or the products and services of any organisation we represent or are associated with; and
• undertake planning, research and statistical analysis.

Up-to-date personal information

We rely on the personal information we hold about you in conducting our business. Therefore, we will use reasonable steps to make sure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate, complete and up-to-date. To help us do that, we may from time to time ask you to tell us if there are any changes to your personal information. If you find that information we hold about you is incorrect, please contact us immediately.

Security

Our security systems include physical security on our premises, data encryption technology and firewalls to prevent unauthorised computer access including identifiers and passwords and restricting access of personal information only to our employees who need it to perform their day-to-day functions.

Please observe your obligations under the Internet Banking Terms and Conditions. In particular, observe the security requirements relating to your Access Code and Password.

We will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify your personal information if we no longer require it for the purposes specified above.

Identifiers

We do not use any of your government identifiers such as your tax file number or Medicare number as our own identifier. We will not use or disclose your government identifier to anyone else unless it is necessary for us to fulfil our obligations to the government agency. For example, we may be required by law to disclose your tax file number to the Australian Tax Office.

Access to your personal information

• doing so would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals;
• doing so would reveal a commercially sensitive decision;
• doing so would be unlawful; or
• access is not permitted by or under law.

If you would like more information about how we manage your personal information, or do not want us to use your personal information to tell you about products and services, or wish to file a complaint about your privacy please, contact us by calling us on (02) 9262 2166, or by writing to us at the postal or email addresses set out above.

Changes to our privacy policy

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 15th April 2005.