Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy of Mortgage Assistance

Protecting your privacy

Mortgage Assistance (ABN 838 907 59121) (Mortgage Assistance) is committed to providing you with the highest levels of customer service experience. This includes protecting your privacy and we comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Notifiable Data Breach scheme established under the Act, and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Set out below is information that we are required to communicate with our customers. We have also supplied additional information about our company. By accessing our website and using our services, you consent to the terms of this Policy and agree to be bound by it. Your privacy matters to us, so whether you are new to Mortgage Assistance or a long-time user, please take the time to get to know our practices.

If you choose to register for our online seminars, we might use your personally identifiable information such as name, email address etc. for marketing, remarketing and retargeting purposes.

About us

Mortgage Assistance is an authorized credit representative number 537371 of the licensed credit assistance provider, BLSSA Pty Ltd (ABN 69 117 651 760), the holder of Australian Credit Licence 391237.

In this document, ‘Mortgage Assistance’, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are references to Mortgage Assistance.

How to contact us

You may contact us during Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) business hours on the details below:

Tel: 0450 222 348
Email: home@mortgageassistance.net.au
Post: Suite 4, 1D, Building 1, 107 Miles Platting Road, Eight Mile Plains QLD 4113

Your personal information

Your personal information and its protection are of utmost importance to us. When we refer to personal information, we mean information or an opinion from which your identity is apparent or can reasonably be ascertained. Personal information held by us may include your name, age or date of birth, current and previous addresses, telephone or mobile phone number, email address, bank details, professional job title or occupation, driver’s license number, passport details, and financial details. We may hold details of the products and services you have acquired from us or have inquired about (including their status) together with any additional information necessary to deliver those products and services and to respond to your inquiries.

The personal information we hold about you may also include credit information. Credit information is a subset of personal information and is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance. It may include any finance that you have outstanding, your repayment history in respect of those loans, and any defaults. Usually, credit information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and credit reporting bodies (CRBs). Personal information derived by a CRB from credit information held by the CRB that has any bearing on an individual’s creditworthiness and is or has been or could be used to establish the individual’s eligibility for credit is known as “CRB Derived Information”.

You may also need to provide personal information about other individuals to us for example, personal information about joint applicants, co-applicants or guarantors, your authorized representatives, or your accountant or solicitor’s contact details. If so, we rely on you to inform those individuals that you are providing their personal information to us, to ensure they agree to their information being provided to us, to advise them of this privacy policy and that we can be contacted for further information (see ‘How to contact us’ section).

If you choose not to provide certain personal information (i) we may not be able to provide you with the services you require or the level of service on which we aim to offer, (ii) we may be unable to tailor our offering to your preferences and (iii) your experience of our offering may not be as enjoyable or as useful.

Sensitive information

Sensitive information is any information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health information. We may seek, collect, use, or disclose sensitive information about you but only if that sensitive information is required for one of the purposes noted under the ‘How we use your personal information’ section of this Policy. This will generally be for the purpose of verifying your identity or income.

You expressly provide your consent to us receiving this information and holding it for the purposes outlined in this policy.

About credit information and ‘notifiable matters’

The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit information. You may request to have these notifiable matters (and our privacy policy) provided to you in an alternative form, such as a hard copy, just ask us.

You authorize us to obtain a copy of your credit report from a CRB in accordance with the rules set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) regarding access seekers. You consent to us providing the information contained in that report (including any credit-related information, arrears information, creditworthiness information, and personal information) to any credit provider who may be able to provide credit to you.

We exchange your credit information with CRBs. We use the credit information that we exchange with the CRBs to assess your creditworthiness, assess your application for finance and manage 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, we may disclose this information to a CRB.

We may disclose your Credit Reporting Information to joint applicants or co-borrowers with your consent. Under the Privacy Act, “Credit Reporting Information” means credit information or CRB Derived Information.

You have the right to request access to the credit information that we hold about you and make a request for us to correct that credit information if needed. We explain how you can do this below. Sometimes, your credit information will be used by CRBs for ‘pre-screening’ credit offers on the request of other credit providers. You can contact the CRB at any time to request that your credit information is not used in this way.

You may contact the CRB to advise them that you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud. For 21 days after the CRB receives your notification, the CRB must not use or disclose that credit information. You can contact any of the following CRBs for more information: illion Australia Pty Ltd (www.illion.com.au), Experian (www.experian.com.au) and Equifax Pty Limited (www.equifax.com.au).

How we collect personal and credit information

We may collect personal information in a number of ways, including but not limited to:

• directly from you, for example, when you provide information by phone, in      application forms, or other agreements, or when you submit your personal      details through our websites (e.g. during an application or via home@mortgageassistance.net.au);
• from your joint applicants, co-applicants or guarantors;
• when you visit our websites;
• from third parties such as our survey or competition websites, marketing websites, related companies, or CRBs;
• from your representatives, e.g. solicitors, conveyancers, builders, agents;
• from referral partners, who refer your business to us;
• from the organisations and entities identified under the ‘When we disclose your      personal information section below, including our related entities;
• from publicly available sources of information;
• from our own records; and/or
• when legally required to do so — for example, in the provision of specific      credit services.

If we have obtained your information through any of these methods and you would like a list of these entities or websites, please contact us at home@mortgageassistance.net.au

If you feel you have not given us consent to use your details or would like to be removed from our call or email lists, please contact us at home@mortgageassistance.net.au

How we use your personal information

The primary purpose for which we collect information about you is to enable us to perform our business activities and functions (primary credit activities) and to provide the best possible quality of customer experience.

Your personal information may be used to: verify your identity; assist you to gain approval or provision of a product or service; provide the services you require; administer and manage those services such as payments; inform you of ways the services provided to you could be improved or additional services that you may benefit from; Marketing Services (explained below); conduct appropriate checks for credit-worthiness and for fraud; research and develop our services provided, either directly or referred; gain an understanding of your information and credit or financial needs in order for us to provide you with a better service.

Your personal information is also collected so that we and our related entities can promote and market services to you (including by way of direct mail, telemarketing, email, SMS and MMS messages) (Marketing Services) in accordance with any applicable marketing laws (secondary purposes). This is to keep you informed of products, services and special offers and we may continue after you cease holding an active product or service through us. If you do not wish for this to take place or continue, please contact us via home@mortgageassistance.net.au

When we disclose your personal information

Your information may be disclosed to persons or companies that are related to us for the purposes noted above.

We will never sell your information to any party outside of us. However, in order to deliver the services, you require we may disclose your personal information to people or organisations outside of Mortgage Assistance. This may include:

• your joint applicants, co-applicants or guarantors;
• your representatives or advisers (e.g. your solicitors, accountants,      conveyancers, builders, agents);
• our professional advisers, including our accountants, auditors, and lawyers;
• organisations  who manage our business, marketing and corporate strategies and/or sponsors or
• promoters  of any competition that we conduct to promote our services;
• credit providers, funders, agents, Australian Banks, and non-bank lenders (e.g.      for credit-related purposes
• such as credit approval, credit-worthiness, credit rating, credit provision and      financing);
• credit-reporting bodies and fraud-checking agencies;
• our related entities (e.g. Mortgage Assistance, Vow Financial Pty Ltd, and      their respective partnerships, joint venture entities, agents, contractors or external service providers for the operation of their business);
• our referral partners;
• providers of credit, financial, or insurance services;
• mortgage insurers and title insurers;
• other comparison sites, mortgage brokers, or providers of investment finance, or      credit (where legal for us to do so);
• the police or other relevant authorities or enforcement bodies;
• government and regulatory authorities or organisations (such as our External Dispute  Resolution Scheme or ASIC, as required or authorised by law); and/or
• Internet service providers or network administrators (for example, if we have      reason to suspect you have committed a breach of our terms and conditions      or have otherwise been engaged in any unlawful activity and we reasonably      believe such disclosure is necessary).

We may use external organisations for customer inquiries; mailing operations; billing and debt-recovery functions; information technology services; marketing and telemarketing market research; and website usage analysis. This means we disclose your personal information to them.

You expressly consent to us providing your information to the persons or organisations above for our primary credit activities or secondary purposes.

Your personal information is disclosed to these organisations only in relation to us providing our services to you. We take reasonable steps to ensure that these organisations are bound by confidentiality and privacy obligations in relation to the protection of your personal information.

Opt-Out

You can let us know at any time if you no longer wish to receive direct marketing offers from Mortgage Assistance by emailing your request to home@mortgageassistance.net.au. We will process your request as soon as we can.

Cookies and web beacons

Cookies

A ‘cookie’ is a small text file placed on your computer by a webpage server that may later be retrieved by webpage servers. We use cookies on our website to provide you with a better website experience. When you visit the Mortgage Assistance website or related landing pages to read browse, submit or download information, our system will record/log your IP address, date and time of your visit to our site, the pages viewed and any information downloaded. We may automatically collect non-personal information about you such as the site from which you linked to our websites. We do not personally identify you with this information. You can configure your browser to refuse cookies or delete existing cookies from your hard drive. Rejecting cookies may have the effect of limiting access to or functionality of parts of our website.

We generally use this information to report statistics, analyse trends, administer our services, diagnose problems and target and improve the quality of our products and services.

Information from third parties

Our website may contain links to Third-Party Websites (e.g. third-party providers of goods and services). We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any Third Party Website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third-party website. Third-Party Websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices. If you access Third-Party Websites through our website and if those third parties collect information about you, we may also collect or have access to that information as part of our arrangements with those third parties.

Where you access a Third-Party Website from our website, cookie and web beacon information, information about your preferences or other information you have provided about yourself may be shared between us and the third party.

E-consent

By providing your email address and then clicking submit on any online form, application, calculator, tool or query, you consent to receive notices and other documents from us by email to the email address provided, and you understand that if you give this consent: we may no longer send you paper copies of notices and other documents; you should regularly check your email address for documents; you may withdraw your consent to receiving documents by email at any time. You also confirm that you have the facilities to print any notice or document that we send you by email if required.

Accurate Information

We take all reasonable precautions to ensure that the personal information we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, the accuracy of that information depends to a large extent on the information you or others provided to us. If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, please contact us at home@mortgageassistance.net.au..

Storage and security

We store information in different ways, including in paper and electronic forms.

The security of your personal information is important to us and we take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Some of the ways we do this are: confidentiality requirements of our employees; document storage security policies; security measures for access to our systems; only giving access to personal information to a person who is verified to be able to receive that information; control of access to our buildings; and electronic security systems, such as firewalls and data encryption on our websites.

We take protecting the security of your personal information seriously. We have a response plan that is designed to enable us to contain, assess and respond to suspected data breaches in a timely fashion, and to help mitigate potential harm to affected individuals.

We may store your information in the cloud or other types of networked or electronic storage. As electronic or networked storage can be accessed from anywhere via an internet connection, it is not always practicable to 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 here or those we referred to from time. In addition to the above, we also regularly review developments in security and encryption technologies. However, it is important to remember that the use of email and the internet may not always be secure, even with these safeguards in place.

When we no longer require your information, and we are legally permitted to, we take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify the information. However, sometimes it is impossible or impractical to completely isolate the information, then completely remove all traces of the information, and we may store the information for future use, such as to help resolve disputes between us or assess future applications by you. The same security safeguards will be in place to protect the information, as detailed in this Privacy Policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We are constantly reviewing all our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations, technology, the law and market practices. Therefore, we may change this Privacy Policy from time to time or as the need arises. All personal information held by us will be governed by the most recently updated policy, available on our website (https://mortgageassistance.net.au/privacy-policy/) or by request.

Complaints and further information

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on our website, and significant updates will be communicated directly.

For any questions or concerns, please contact us at https://mortgageassistance.com.au/ or call at 0450 222 348