Who are we?
‘We’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refer to Rateseeker (ABN 91 616 470 930) and our related businesses.
Our commitment to protect your privacy
At Rateseeker, we understand that the details you provide us are private and personal. It’s important that you feel secure whenever you deal with us. It’s also important that you understand how we protect your privacy and the manner in which we may use your details. As such our policies relating to personal information are designed to ensure that you are fully protected under Australian privacy laws. 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 and any other relevant law.
Personal information
When we refer to personal information we mean information from which your identity is reasonably apparent. This information may include information or an opinion about you. The personal information we hold about you may also include credit information.
Credit information is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance and 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.
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 made need to identify you.
If you are applying for finance we may also collect the ages and number of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time 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 your health information. We will only collect health information from you with your consent.
Why we collect your personal information
We collect personal information when you apply to join our network or 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.
To enable us to maintain a successful business relationship with you, we may disclose your personal information to other organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us. We may also disclose your personal information to any other organisation that may have or is considering having an interest in your finance, or in our business.
How do we collect your personal information?
We will only collect personal information about you by lawful and fair means. We usually collect personal information directly from you (or from someone you’ve authorised to deal with us on your behalf), for example when:
- you enquire about or seek a quote for a product or service we offer;
- you apply for or purchase a product available through Rateseeker;
- you contact us by telephone, via mail, e-mail or online;
- you visit our website (including when you request a quote or use any of our calculators);
- we supply any other products or services to you; or
- you enter into or participate in any promotions, competitions, specials or other offers with Rateseeker.
Where reasonable and practical we will collect your personal information directly from you. We may also collect your personal information from other people such as accountants and lawyers.
If you provide us with personal information about another person (such as a family member), it’s important that you let the person know we have collected their information and that they can ask to access and correct the information we hold about them.
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;
- 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 consent;
- where we are required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money or Laundering and Courter Terrorism Financing Act2006 (Cth);
- to investors, agents or advisers, or any entity that has an interest in our business; or
- to your employer, referees or identity verification services.
Prior to disclosing any of your personal information to another person or organisation, we will take all reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that:
- (a) the person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to our commitment, or
- (b) 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 the IT servers may be located outside Australia.
We may disclose your personal information to overseas entities that provide support functions to us.
You may obtain more information about these entities by contacting us.
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 telephoning us on 02 8005 1468 or by writing to us at info@rateseeker.com.au. 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.
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 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 ensure the information we hold about you is accurate or complete.
Access and correction to your personal information
We will provide you with access to the personal 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 to you.
Depending on the type of request that you make we may respond to your request immediately, otherwise we usually respond to you within seven days of receiving your request. We may need to contact other entities to properly investigate your request.
There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal 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 information we hold about you.
If any of the personal 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 to you 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 information within 30 days.
We may need to consult with other entities as part of our investigation.
If we refuse to correct personal information we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting the information.
Using government identifiers
If we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file number or a driver’s licence number, we do not use or disclose this information other than required by law. We will never use a government identifier in order to identify you.
Business without identifying you
In most circumstances it will be 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, for example, if you make general inquiries 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 that includes information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political persuasion, memberships in trade or professional associations or trade unions, sexual preferences, criminal record, or health.
Data quality and Security
We may store your information in hardcopy and/or in electronic form. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
This may include a range of systems and communication security measures, as well as the secure storage of hard copy documents. In addition, access to your personal information will be restricted to those properly authorised to have access.
We rely on the personal information we hold in conducting our business. Therefore, it is very important that the information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you believe that your personal information is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, and irrelevant or misleading, please contact our Privacy Officer using the details provided here and we will correct that information within 30 days of receiving any information we need to make the change.
Before we correct your personal information, we will need to verify and confirm your identity. If someone makes the request on your behalf, we will require your prior written consent or we will contact you directly to collect your consent.
If we don’t agree that the information needs to be corrected, we will write to let you know why. If that occurs, you can ask us to include a statement with the information that says you believe it’s inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, irrelevant or misleading.
Website usage and Cookies
Our website is professionally hosted and operates in a secure environment. You should, however, be aware that there is always an inherent risk in transmitting your personal information via the Internet.
Cookies are pieces of information that a website downloads to your computer to record your preferences while you browse. Other technologies that may be used by Rateseeker include web beacons (which may operate in conjunction with cookies). The information collected through these technologies may be used by Rateseeker to improve and customise your experience on our website. In addition, we collect aggregated non-personally identifiable data from our website to help us maintain and improve delivery of the Rateseeker online service, to provide a consistent experience and targeted marketing. This aggregated information assists Rateseeker to improve content and website navigation.
You can configure your web browser to reject and block cookies. If you decide to delete or block certain cookies, your experience on our website may be limited.
When you visit any of our online resources, our system may collect information about your visit for statistical purposes, including:
- server address;
- top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc.);
- the date and time of your visit to the site;
- the pages you accessed and documents downloaded during your visit;
- the previous site you visited;
- if you’ve visited our site before; and
- the type of browser used.
We record this information to maintain our server and improve our services. There are several methods and packages that we use to collect visitor behaviours on each of our online platforms. Like a number of commercial website operators, we use tools to measure and analyse internet usage across our websites. This enables us to track the number of unique browsers to our websites.
In some cases, we allow third-party vendors to use cookies and web beacon to provide you with information about our services and products. These technologies may be used in regard to activities like surveys, website analytics, online behavioural advertising and email campaign management. There are ways for you to opt out of third-party cookies; (i) by contacting Rateseeker; or (ii) visiting youronlinechoices.com.au that allows you to opt out of some online behavioural advertising. These services provided by third party vendors generally operate without the collection or use of any personal information. In many cases, the information relates only to a device or is of a statistical nature, and we will not be able to identify the user.
Links to third party sites
We provide links to third party websites from our website. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices or policies of these third party websites.
These links are provided for your convenience and do not represent Rateseeker’s endorsement of any linked third party website. We recommend that you review the privacy policies of these third parties prior to providing them with your personal information.
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.
How you can make a privacy complaint
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, you may contact our complaints officer on 02 8005 1468 or by writing to info@rateseeker.com.au
We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days. We will investigate your complaint and provide you with a decision on your complaint within 30 days. If after our initial assessment of your complaint we decide that we need more information or that we will need more time to respond to you, we will let you know within a few days of receiving your complaint.
If you are dissatisfied with the response of our complaints officer you may make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner which can be contacted on either www.oaic.gov.au or 1300 363 992.
Further information
You may request further information about the way we manage your personal information by contacting us.
Change in our privacy policy
We are constantly reviewing all of our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations. Technology is constantly changing, as is the law and market place 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 was last updated on 12 March 2019.