Who are we?
‘We’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refer to Diverse Funding Pty Ltd (trading as Diverse Funding Solutions) and our related businesses.
Our commitment to protecting your privacy
We understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document sets out our privacy policy commitment in respect of the personal information we hold about you and what we do with that information.
We guarantee that any personal information we collect about you will be used only for the purposes for which we collected it, or as allowed under the law. It is important to us that you are confident that we will protect any personal information we hold about you. 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 1988 (Cth) and any other relevant law.
Personal information
When we refer to personal information, we mean information from which your identity can reasonably be deduced. This information may include an opinion about you.
The personal information we hold about you may also include credit information. Credit information is information 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.
The kinds of personal information we may collect about you include your 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 ask for the number and ages of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time you have lived at your current address, your employment details and proof of earnings and expenses. If you apply for any insurance product through us, we may also collect information about your health, but only with your consent.
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. From time to time we may offer you other products and services.
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, social media, finance brokers and other people such as accountants and lawyers.
Do we disclose your personal information?
We may disclose your personal information:
- to prospective funders or other intermediaries in relation to your finance requirements;
- to other organisations that are involved in managing or administering your finance, such as third-party suppliers, printing and postal services, call centres, lenders mortgage insurers, trade insurers and credit reporting bodies;
- to associated businesses that may want to market products to you;
- to companies that provide information and infrastructure systems to us;
- to anybody who represents you, such as finance brokers, lawyers and accountants;
- to anyone, where you have provided us with consent;
where we are required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth); or - to investors, agents or advisers, or any entity that has an interest in your finance or our business;
- organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us; or
- to your employer, referees or identity verification services.
Before disclosing any of your personal information to another person or organisation, we will take all reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that:
- the person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to our commitment; or
- you have consented to us making the disclosure.
We may use cloud storage to store the personal information we hold about you. The cloud storage and IT servers may be located outside Australia.
Credit Information
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, including 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, which is information about whether you have met your repayments on time;
- information about the type of finance you are applying for;
- default and payment information; and
- court proceedings information.
We exchange this credit information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing that finance.
This credit information may be held by us in electronic form on our secure servers and may also be held in paper form. We may use cloud storage to store the credit information we hold about you.
When we obtain credit information from a credit reporting body about you, we may also seek publicly available information, and information about any serious credit infringement you may have committed.
We will not disclose your credit information to overseas entities.
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 this privacy policy) provided to you in an alternative form.
We exchange your credit information with credit reporting bodies. We use the credit information we exchange with the credit reporting body to assess your creditworthiness and your application for finance, and for managing your finance.
If you fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any finance we have provided or 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 information we hold about you and make ask us to correct that credit information if needed. Please see information under the heading ‘Access and correction to your personal and credit information’ below.
Sometimes your credit information will be used by credit reporting bodies for the purposes of ‘pre-screening’ credit offers at the request of other credit providers. You can contact the credit reporting body at any time to request that it does not use your credit information in this way.
You may advise the credit reporting body that you believe you may have been a victim of fraud. The credit reporting body must not use or disclose that credit information for 21 days after it receives your notification. You can contact any of the following credit reporting bodies for more information:
- veda.com.au
- dnb.com.au
- experian.com.au.
Direct marketing
From time to time we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company with whom we are associated.
If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such information by calling us on 1300 94 22 33 or writing to us at Level 25, 100 Mount Street, North Sydney NSW 2060. If the direct marketing is by email, you may also use the ‘unsubscribe’ function. We will not charge you for giving effect to your request, and will take all reasonable steps to meet your request at the earliest possible opportunity.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that 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 may ask you to inform us of any changes to your personal information.
If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, you may contact us. We will generally rely on you to ensure the information we hold about you is accurate and complete.
Assessing and correcting 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.
Depending on the type of request you make, we may be able to respond immediately. It may take longer if we may need to contact other entities to properly investigate your request, but we will usually respond within seven days.
There may be 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 – or if your request is vexatious.
An explanation will be provided to you if we deny you access to the personal or credit information we hold about you.
If any of the personal or credit information we hold about you is incorrect, inaccurate 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 within seven days of receiving your request. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal or credit information, within 30 days.
We may need to consult other finance providers or credit reporting bodies or entities as part of our investigation.
If we refuse to correct personal or credit information, we will provide you with our reasons.
Using government identifiers
If we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file number, we will not use or disclose this information other than as authorised by law. We will never use a government identifier to identify you.
Business without identifying you
In most circumstances, it will be necessary for us to identify you 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 – for example, if you make general enquiries about interest rates or current promotional offers.
Sensitive information
We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent. Sensitive information is personal information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political persuasion, memberships in trade or professional associations or trade unions, sexual preferences, criminal record, and health.
How safe and secure is your personal information that we hold?
We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information in paper and electronic form. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
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 1988 (Cth) and the Credit Reporting Code, you may call our complaints officer on 1300 94 22 33.
We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days. We will provide you with a decision on your complaint within 30 days.
If you are dissatisfied with the response of our complaints officer, you may make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner, who can be contacted at www.oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
Further information
You may request further information about the way we manage your personal or credit information by contacting us.
Changes to our privacy policy
We are constantly reviewing our policies and attempting to keep up to date with market expectations. Technology is constantly changing, as is the law and market 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.
This privacy policy came into existence on 1 January 2020.
