Privacy Policy

The privacy of personal information you provide to us is important. This Privacy Policy governs the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information by MCAF Financial Services Pty Limited (ABN: 32 626 048 995), their related entities, employees and the credit representative that will assist you (‘we’ ‘us’). This Privacy Policy sets out how we intend to respect your rights to privacy, in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs)and Part IIIA of the Privacy Act 1988, the Privacy (Credit Reporting) Code 2014 and any other relevant law.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND HOW DO WE USE IT?

Personal information
When we refer to ‘personal information’, we mean information we obtain from you is used, subject to compliance with Australia’s privacy and credit-related reporting laws, only for the purposes listed in this consent and is not disclosed to any person except as permitted, required by law or with your permission.

‘Credit-related information’ means;

‘Credit information’ includes your identity; the type, terms and maximum amount of credit provided to you, including when that credit was provided and when it was repaid; repayment history information; default information (including overdue payments)payment information, new arrangement information, details of any serious credit infringements, court proceedings information, personal insolvency information and publicly available information
‘Credit eligibility information’ relates to credit reporting information supplied to us by a credit reporting body and any information that we derive from it

Credit-related information allows us to assess your eligibility to be provided with any finance. Credit related information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and credit reporting bodies.

The type of personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, address, occupation, account details and other relevant information required to identify you. If you are applying for a loan, we may also collect the number and ages of your dependents, the length of time you have lived at your current address, your employment details, proof of income / expenses and other financial details. If you apply for an insurance product through us, we may also collect your health information, only with your consent.

If you give us personal information about another person, you represent that you are authorised to do so and agree that you have obtained consent from that person, for us to use and disclose their personal information. They may access any personal information we hold about them.

How we collect personal information
Where reasonable and practical, we will collect your personal information directly from you.

We collect personal information from you through our credit representative (broker) when interviewing you, or when collecting information through completed online forms.

How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to assist us in assessing your application for credit, manage that credit application and any future applications for credit;

Establish your identity
Contacting you
Managing our risk and to comply with our legal obligations
Communicate information about our products and services to you
Meet our internal administrative, marketing, planning research and requirements

Credit related information;
We exchange credit related information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing that finance. If you propose to be a guarantor, one of our checks may involve obtaining a credit report about the guarantor.

This credit-related information may be held by us in electronic form on our secure servers and may also beheld in paper form. We may use cloud storage to store the credit-related information we hold about you.

When we obtain credit eligibility information about you from a credit reporting body, we may also seek publicly available information and information about any serious credit infringements that you may have committed. Where we do this, we make sure appropriate data handling and security arrangements are in place.

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.

Business without identifying you;
In most circumstances, it will b necessary for us to identify you in order 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 – making general enquiries about interest rates or current promotional offers.

HOW DO WE HOLD AND PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION?

How we store your personal information;
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or exposure by;

Installing security and access requirements for all our IT systems, passwords, firewall and virus scanning software
Maintaining document storage and destruction policies
Providing your personal information to you only when we are satisfied as to your identity

We store your personal information in both electronic and paper form. All staff are required to maintain the confidentiality of customer information. Access to personal information is restricted to employees whose job responsibilities require access to the information. If we no longer need to hold your personal information, it is securely destroyed.

WILL WE DISCLOSE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT TO ANYONE?

Disclosure of your personal information to others;
Where possible we will inform you, at the time of collecting your personal information, of the types of organisations to which we intend to disclose your personal information. We may disclose your personal information to;

prospective funders or other intermediaries in relation to your finance requirements
associated businesses that may want to market products to you
companies that provide information and infrastructure systems to us, our agents, contractors, external service providers to outsource certain functions, e.g. debt recovery and information technology support
anybody who represents you, such as finance brokers, lawyers, mortgage brokers, guardians, persons holding powers of attorney, accountants
anyone, where you have provided us consent to disclose
other borrowers or guarantors (if more than one)
borrowers or prospective borrowers, including in relation to any credit you guarantee or propose to guarantee
our auditors, insurers, re-insurers
where we are authorised to do so by law, such as under, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006, government and law enforcement agencies or regulators
investors, agents or advisers, trustees, rating agencies or any entity that has an interest in your finance
other financial institutions, e.g. to process a claim for mistaken payment
Organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us
your employer, former employer, referees or identity verification services

Will we disclose the information we collect to anyone;

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. administration and supervision activities, contractors who supply services to us e.g. 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
We may use cloud storage to store your personal information that we hold

Disclosure to overseas recipients;
Some of the recipients to whom we disclose your personal information may be based overseas. It is not practicable to list every country in which such recipients are located but it is likely that such countries will include the Philippines, India and Nepal.

Notifiable matters;
The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit-related information. You may request to have these notifiable matters (and this policy) provided to you in an alternative form.

We exchange and use your credit-related information with credit reporting bodies to confirm your identity, assess your credit worthiness, assess your application for finance or your capacity to be a guarantor and manage your finance.

The information we can exchange includes your identification details, what type of loans you have, how much you have borrowed, whether or not you have met your loan payment obligations and if you have committed a serious credit infringement, fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any finance that we have arranged or you have committed a serious credit infringement, we may disclose this information to a credit reporting body.

You have the right to request access to the credit-related information that we hold about you and make a request for us to correct that information if needed; refer to heading ‘access and correction of your personal and credit-related information’. At times your credit information will be used by credit reporting bodies for the purpose of ‘pre-screening’ credit offers on the request of other credit providers. You can contact any of the following credit reporting bodies for more information:

Illion (Australia) Pty Ltd
Equifax Pty Ltd

HOW CAN YOU CHECK, UPDATE OR CHANGE THE INFORMATION WE ARE HOLDING?

Access to and correction of your personal information;
You may request access to any of the personal information we hold about you at any time. We will respond to you within seven days of receiving your request. We may need to contact third parties to properly investigate your request and provide you with an outcome of our investigation within thirty days.

There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal information, should the information relate to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, or if your request is vexatious. An explanation will be provided to you if we deny access to personal information we hold about you. If we refuse to amend personal information, we will provide you with our reasons for not amending the information.

Updating your personal information;
It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up-to-date. During the course of our relationship with you, we will 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. We will generally rely on you to assist us by informing us if the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete.

Business without identifying you;
It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up-to-date. During the course of our relationship with you, we will 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. We will generally rely on you to assist us by informing us if the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete.

YOUR CONSENT

Sensitive information;
We will collect sensitive information about you only with your consent. Sensitive information is personal information relating to your ethnic or racial origin, political persuasion, memberships in trade or professional associations or trade unions, sexual preferences, criminal record or health and may include any information you tell us about any vulnerability you may have.

Government related identifiers;
If we collect government identifiers, such as your Tax File Number (TFN) we do not use or disclose this information other than as required by law. We will never use a government identifier in order to identify you.

Direct marketing;
From time to time, we will use your contact details to send you direct marketing communications including offers, updates and newsletters that are relevant to the services we provide. We may do so electronically or by mail unless you tell us you do not wish to receive direct marketing communications.

If the directing marketing is by email, you may also use the unsubscribe ‘opt-out’ function included in such emails. We will take all reasonable steps to satisfy your request at the earliest possible opportunity.

We do not sell your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

Contacting us and providing feedback;
If you are not satisfied with how we have managed your personal information, you may contact the Privacy Officer who will acknowledge your complaint within seven days of receipt and provide you with a decision on your complaint within thirty days of receipt.

You can make any requests relating to your personal information held by us or any complaints regarding treatment of your privacy by contacting;

The Privacy Officer MCAF Financial
Phone: 0412 404 184
Email: loris.snaidero@mcafconnect.com.au

Further information;
You may request further information about the way we manage your personal or credit-related information by contacting us.

COMPLAINTS

Internal Dispute Resolution

‍If you do have a complaint, please let us know by email, because if we don’t know about it we can’t fix it. You may also contact us by email addressed to; The Complaints Officer at Loris Snaidero at loris.snaidero@mcafconnect.com.au, please make sure you include as much information as you can.

You should explain the details of your complaint as clearly as you can. You must do this in writing. When we receive a complaint, we will attempt to resolve it promptly.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change this policy to include any new products or services that we may provide and amend this policy from time to time to comply with new laws or codes of practice that may be implemented.

This Privacy Policy came into operation on 12 September 2022.