Australian Credit Licence Number 387406

Privacy Policy

Respecting your privacy

We respect your personal information, and this privacy policy explains how we handle it. The policy covers the activities of Synergy Home Loan (Australia) ACN 106 068 517.

This policy also includes our credit reporting policy, that is, it covers additional information on how we manage your personal information collected in connection with a credit application, or credit facility. We refer to this as credit- related information below as credit information.

Who is Synergy Home Loans (Australia) Pty Ltd?

Synergy Home Loans (Australia) Pty Ltd is a Mortgage Manager that provides access to Residential Mortgage Products offered by various lenders to approved applicants within the Mortgage Industry. Synergy Home Loans (Australia) Pty Ltd manage the loan during the term of the loan contract.

What personal information can we collect and hold?

General information

The types that we collect and hold about you can include:
ID information such as your name, postal or email address, telephone numbers, and date of birth;
other contact details such as your social media handles;
financial details such as your tax file number;
credit information such as details relating to credit history, credit capacity, and eligibility for credit (‘credit worthiness’) and other information we deem necessary.

Information from a credit reporting body

When we’re checking your credit worthiness, and at other times, we might collect information about you and give it to credit recording bodies. This information can include:
ID information: a record of your name (s) (including an alias or previous name), date of birth, gender, current or last known address and previous addresses, name of current or last known employer and drivers licence.
Information request: a record of a lender asking a credit reporting body for information in relation to a credit application, including the type and amount you have credit applied for.
Default information: a record of your consumer credit payment being overdue.
Serious credit infringement: a record of when a lender reasonably believes that there has been a fraud relating to your consumer credit or that you have avoided paying your consumer credit payments and the lender can’t find you.
Personal insolvency information: a record of your bankruptcy or entry into a debt agreement or personal insolvency agreement.
Court proceedings information: an Australian court judgement relating to your credit.
Publicly available information: a record relating to your activities in Australia and your credit worthiness
Consumer credit liability information: certain details relating to your consumer credit, such as the name of the credit provider, whether the credit provider has an Australian Credit Licence, the type of consumer credit, the day on which the consumer credit payments were entered into and terminated, the maximum amount of credit available and certain repayment terms and conditions.
Repayment history information: a record of whether or not you’ve made monthly consumer credit payments and when they were paid.
Payment information: if a lender gave a credit reporting body default information about you and the overdue amount is paid, a statement that the payment has been made.
New arrangement information: if a lender gave credit reporting body default information about you and your consumer credit contract is varied or has been made
We base some things on the information we get from credit reporting bodies, such as: our summaries of what the credit reporting bodies tell us; and credit scores. A credit score is a calculation that lets us know how likely a credit applicant will repay credit we may make available to them. Information that we get from a credit reporting body or information we derive from such information is known as credit eligibility information.

What sensitive information do we collect?

Sometimes we need to collect sensitive information about you, for instance in relation to some insurance applications. This could include medical checks, medical consultation reports or other information about your health. Unless required by law we will only collect sensitive information with your consent.

When the law authorises or requires us to collect information

We may need to collect information about you because we are required or authorised by law to collect it. There are laws that affect financial institutions, including company and tax law, which require us to collect personal information. For example, we require personal information to verify your identity under Commonwealth Anti-Money Laundering law.

What do we collect via your website activity?

If you use our online services, we monitor your use of our online services to ensure we can verify you and can receive information from us, and to identify ways we can improve our services for you.

If you start but don’t submit an online application, we can contact you using any of the contact details you’ve supplied to offer help in completing it. The information in applications will we kept temporarily then destroyed if the application is not complete.

We also know that some customers like to engage with us through social media channels. We may need to collect information about you when you interact with us through these channels. However for confidential matters, we’ll ensure we interact with you via a secure forum.

To improve our services and product, we sometimes collect de-identified information from web users. That information could include IP addresses geographical information to ensure your use of our online services is secure.

How do we collect your personal information?

We understand that your personal information needs to be looked after and isn’t something you leave lying around for just anybody to take. So unless it’s unreasonable and impractical, we will try to collect personal information directly from you (referred to as ‘solicited information’). It’s important that you help us to do this and keep your contact details up-to-date.

There are many ways we seek information from you. We might collect your information when you fill out a form with us, when you’ve given us a call or used our websites. We also find using electronic means, such as email or SMS, a convenient way to communicate with you and to verify your details.

How do we collect your information from other sources?

Sometimes we need to collect information about you from other sources. We do this only if it’s necessary to do so. Instances of when we may need to include where:
we can’t get hold of you and we rely on publicly available information to update your contact details;
we need information from an insurer about an insurance application you made through us;
we are checking the security you are offering through public registers and our service providers;
and at your request, we exchange information with your legal or finical advisers or other representatives.

What if you don’t want to provide us with your personal information?

If you do not provide us with your personal information we may not be able to:
provide you with the product or service you want; manage or administer your product or service;
verify your identity or protect you against fraud;
or let you know about other products or services that might better meet you financial needs.

How do we collect your credit information

We will collect your credit information and details included in your application for credit (whether paper based, phone or electronic) and from the records we maintain about the products or service you receive from us. In addition to what we say above about collecting information from other sources, other main sources for collecting credit information are:
Credit reporting bodies;
other credit providers;
your co-loan applicants or co-borrowers;
your guarantors/proposed guarantors;
your employer, accountant, real estate agent or other referees;
your agents and other representatives like your referees, brokers, solicitors, conveyances and settlement agents;
organisations that help us to process credit applications such as loan funders;
organisations that check the security you are offering such as valuers;
organisations providing lenders mortgage insurance and title insurance for us;
bodies that issue identification documents to help us check your identity; and
our service providers involved in helping us provide credit or administer credit products, including debt collectors and our legal advisors

What do we do when we get information we didn’t ask for?

Because we deal with a large number of organisations and people, these people often share information with us we haven’t sought out (referred to as unsolicited information’). Where we receive unsolicited personal information about you, we will check whether that information is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities. If it is, we’ll handle this information the same way we do with other information we seek from you, if not, we’ll ensure we do the right thing and destroy or de-identify it.

How do we take care of your personal information?

We store information in different ways, including paper and electronic form. 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 unauthorised 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
We store personal information physically or electronically with third party data storage providers. Where we do this, we use contractual arrangements to ensure those providers take appropriate measures to protect that information and restrict the uses to which they can put that information.

What happens when we no longer need your information?

We’ll only keep your information for as long as we require it for our purposes. We’re also required to keep some of your information for certain periods of time under law, such as the Corporations Act, the Anti-Money Laundering & Counter-Terrorism Financing Act, and the Financial Transition Reports Act for example. When we no longer need your information we’ll ensure that your information is destroyed or de-identified.

How do we use your personal information?

What are the main reasons we collect, hold and use your information? Because we offer a range of services and products, collecting your personal information allows us to provide you with the products and services you’ve asked for. This means we can use your personal information to:
Provide you with information about products and services; consider your request for products and services, including your eligibility; process your application and provide you with products and services; and administer products and services which includes answering your requests and complaints, varying products and services, taking any required legal action in relation to our accounts and managing our relevant products portfolios

What are the other ways we use your information?

The information collected about you may be used in the following ways:
identifying you or verifying your authority to act on behalf of a customer; telling you about other products or services that may be of interest to you, or running competitions and other promotions (this can be via email, telephone, SMS, mail or any other electronic means including via social networking forums), unless you tell us not to;
assisting in arrangement with other organisations in relation to a product or service we make available to you; allowing us to run our business and perform administrative and operational task, such as;
Training staff; developing and marketing products and services; risk management; systems development and testing, including our websites and other online channels; undertaking planning, research and statistical analysis
preventing or investigating any fraud or crime, or any suspected fraud or crime; as required by law, regulation or codes binding us; and for any purpose for which you have given your consent

How do we use your credit information?

In addition to the ways for using personal information mentioned above, we may also use your credit information to:
enable a mortgage insurer or title insurer to access the risk of providing insurance to us or to address our contractual arrangements with the insurer; access whether to accept a guarantor being unable to meet their obligations; consider hardship requests; and
assess whether to securitise loans and arrange the securitising of loans

Can we use your information for marketing our products and services?

We may use or disclose your personal information to let you know about products and services we offer that might better serve your financial needs, or running competitions or promotions and other opportunities in which you may be interested.

We may conduct these marketing activities via email, telephone, SMS, mail, or any other electronic means. We may also market our products to you through third party channels (such as social networking sites). We will always let you know that you can opt out from receiving third party or program marketing offers. Where we market to prospective customers, we are happy to let them know we have obtained their information and will provide easy to follow opt-outs

Yes, You Can Opt-Out

You can let us know at any time if you no longer wish to receive direct marketing offers from us. We will process your request as soon as possible.

Who do we share your personal information with?

To make sure we can meet you specific needs and for the purposes described in ‘how we use your personal information’. We sometimes need to share your personal information with others. We may share your information with other organisations for any purposes for which we use your information.
Sharing at your request We may need to share your personal information with:
Your representative or any person acting on your behalf (for example, financial advisers, lawyers, settlements agents, accountants, executors, administers, trustees, guardians, brokers or auditors); and your referee such as your employer (to confirm details about you).

Sharing with Credit Reporting bodies We may disclose information about you to a credit reporting body if you apply for a credit or you have obtained credit from us or if you guarantee or are considering guaranteeing the obligations of another person to us or you are a director of a company that is a loan applicant or borrower or guarantor. When we give your information to a credit reporting body, it may be included in reports that the credit reporting body gives other organisations (such as other lenders) to help them assess your credit worthiness.
Some of the information may reflect adversely on your credit worthiness, for example, if you fail to make payments or commit a serious credit infringement (like obtaining credit by fraud). That sort of information may affect your ability to get credit from other lenders.
Sharing with third parties We may share your personal information with third parties, including:
Those involved in providing, managing or administering your product or service;
authorised representatives who sell products or services on our behalf;
superannuation and managed funds organisations, and their advisers; medical professionals, medical facilities or health authorities who verify any health information you may provide; valuers, insurers (including lenders’ mortgage and title insures) , re- insures, claim assessors and investigators; brokers or referees who refer your application or business to us; loyalty programme partners;
other financial institutions, such as banks;
organisations involved in debt collecting, including purchasers of debt; fraud reporting agencies (including organisations that assist with fraud investigations and organisations established to identify, investigate and/or prevent any fraud, suspected fraud, crime, suspected crime, or misconduct or of a serious nature ): real estate agents; government or regulatory bodies ( including ASIC and the Australian Tax Office) as required or authorised by law (in some instances these bodies may share it with relevant foreign authorities); our accountants, auditors or lawyers and external advisers;
rating agenises to extent necessary to allow the rating agency to rate particular investments; any party involved in securitising your facility, including re-insurers and underwriters, loan services, trust managers, trustees and security trustees; guarantors and prospective guarantors of your facility; organisations that maintain, review and develop our business systems, procedures and technology infrastructure, including testing or upgrading our computer systems; organisations that participate with us in payments systems including merchants, payment organisations and organisations that produce cards, cheque books or statements for us; our joint venture partners that conduct business with us; organisations involved in a corporate re-organisation or transfer of Group assets or business; organisations that assist with our product planning, research and development; mailing houses and telemarketing agencies who assist us to communicate with you; other organisations involved in our normal business practices, including our agents and contractors; and where you’re given your consent

How do you access your personal information?

How you can generally access your information

We’ll always give you access to your personal information unless there are certain legal reasons why we can’t. You can ask us in writing to access your personal information that we hold. In some cases we may be able to deal with your request over the phone.

We will give you access to your information in the form you want it where it’s reasonable and practical. We may charge you a small fee to cover our costs when giving you access, but we’ll always check with you first.

We’re not always required to give you access to your personal information. Some of the situations where we don’t have to give you access include when:

We believe there is a threat to life or public safety;
there is unreasonable impact on others;
the request is frivolous;
the information wouldn’t be ordinarily accessible because of legal proceedings;
it would prejudice negotiations with you;
it would be unlawful;
it would jeopardise taking action against serious misconduct;
it would be likely to harm the activities of an enforcement body (e.g. the police); or
it would harm the confidentiality of our commercial information

In relation to credit eligibility information, the expectations may differ

If we can’t provide your information in the way you’ve requested, we will tell you why in writing. If you have any concerns, you can complain. See ‘contact us’

How to access your credit eligibility information

Where you request access to credit information about you that we’ve obtained from credit reporting bodies (or based on that information), you have been following additional rights

We must:
Provide you access to the information within 30 days (unless unusual circumstances apply); make information clear and assessable; and ask you to check with credit reporting bodies what information they hold about you.
These ensure it is accurate and up-to-date

We are not required to give you access to this information if:
It would be unlawful;
or it would be likely you harm activities of an enforcement body (e.g. the police)
We may also restrict what we give you if it would harm the confidentiality of our commercial information

If we refuse to give access to any credit eligibility information, we will tell you why in writing. If you have any concerns, you can complain to our external dispute resolution scheme or the Office of the Australia Information Commissioner

How do you correct your personal information?

Contact us if you think there is something wrong with the information we hold about you and we’ll try to correct it if it’s:
Inaccurate;
out of date;
incomplete;
irrelevant; or
misleading
If you are worried that we have given incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction, we’ll try where we can – if we can’t, then we’ll let you know in writing.

What additional things do we have to correct your credit information?

If you ask us to correct credit information to be corrected credit information, we will help you with this in the following way.

Helping you manage corrections

Whether we made the mistake or someone else made it, we are required to help you ask for the information to be corrected. So we can do this, we might need to talk others. However, the most efficient way for you to make correction request is to send it to the organisation which made the mistake.

Where we correct information

If we’re able to correct the information, we’ll let you know within five business days of deciding to do this. We’ll also let relevant third parties know as well as any others you tell us about. If there are any instances where we can’t do this, then we’ll let you know in writing

Where we can’t correct information

If we can’t make corrections within 30 day time frame or the agreed time frame, we must:
Let you know about the delay, the reasons for it and when we expect to resolve the matter; ask you to agree in writing to give us more time; and let you know you can complain to our external dispute resolution scheme or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

How do you make a complaint?

How do you generally make a complaint? If you have a complaint about how we handle your personal information, we want to hear from you

You can contact us by using the details below

The Manager
Synergy Home Loans Suite 5, QV Centre 7 High Street
Launceston Tas 7250
Telephone 03 63317474
Email: support@synergyhomeloans.com.au

We are committed to resolving your complaint and doing the right thing by our customers. Most complaints are resolved quickly, and you should hear from us within five business days.

Need more help?

If you still feel your issue hasn’t been resolved to your satisfaction, then you can raise your concern with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:
Online: www.oaic.gov.au/priavcy
Phone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@ocia.gov.au
Fax: +61 2 0284 9666
Mail: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001 or GPO Box Canberra ACT 2601

What additional things do we have to do to manage your complaints about credit information?

If your complaint relates to how we handled your access and correction requests you may take your complaint directly to our external dispute resolution scheme or the Office of Australian Information Commissioner. You are not required to let us try to fix it first.

For all other complaints relating to credit information

If you make a complaint about things (other than access request or correction request) in relation to your credit information, we will let you know how we will deal with it within seven days.

Ask for more time to rectify your complaint

If we can’t resolve your complaint within 30 days, we’ll let you know why and how long we think it will take. We will also ask you for an extension of time to fix the matter. If you have any concerns, you may complain to our external dispute resolution scheme or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Letting you know about our decision

We’ll let you know about our decision within 30 days or any longer agreed time frame. If you have any concerns, you may complain to our external dispute resolution scheme or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Contact details for Credit Reporting Bodies

As outlined above, if you apply for credit or have a credit facility with us, we may give your personal information to one or more credit reporting bodies. The contact details of the credit reporting bodies we may use are outlined below. Each credit reporting body has a credit reporting policy about how they handle your information. You can obtain copies of these policies at their websites.

Veda Advantage Business Information Services Ltd

Online: www.mycreditflie.com.au
Veda Advantage’s credit reporting policy is set out at http://www.veda.com.au/privacy
Mail: Attention: Public Access Division Veda Advantage PO Box 966 North Sydney NSW 2059

Dun & Bradstreet Australia

Online: www.checkyourcredit.com.au
Dunn and Bradstreet’s credit reporting policy is set out at http://dnb.com.au/Header/About_Us/Leagal/Privacy_policy/index.aspx
Phone: 1300 734 806
Mail: Attention Public Access Centre Dun & Bradstreet Australia PO Box 7405 St Kilda Rd VIC 3004

Contact credit reporting bodies if you think you have been a victim of fraud

If you believe you have been likely to be a victim of fraud (including identity fraud), you can request a credit reporting body not to use or disclose the information they hold about you. If you do this, the credit reporting body mustn’t use or disclose the information during an initial 21 day period without your consent (unless the use or disclose is required by law.) This is known as a ban period.

If, after the initial 21 day ban period, the credit reporting body believes on reasonable grounds that you continue to be or are a likely to be a victim of fraud, the credit reporting body must extend the ban period as they think reasonable in the circumstances. The credit reporting body must give you a written notice of the extension.

Contact credit reporting bodies if you don’t want your information used by them for direct marketing/pre screening purposes

Credit reporting bodies can use the personal information about you that they collect for a pre-scanning assessment at the request of a credit provider unless you ask them not to. A pre screening assessment is an assessment of individuals to see if they satisfy particular eligibility requirements of a credit provider to receive direct marketing. You have the right to contact a credit reporting body to say that you don’t want your information used in pre scanning assessments. If you do this, the credit reporting body must not use your information for this purpose.

What if you want to interact with us anonymously or use a pseudonym?

If you have general enquiry type questions, you can choose to do this anonymously or use a pseudonym. We might not always be able to interact with you this way however as we are often governed by strict regulations that require us to know who we are dealing with. In general, we won’t be able to deal with you anonymously or where you are using a pseudonym when it is impractical or we are required authorised by law or a court/tribunal order to deal with you personally.

What do we do with government-related identifiers?

In certain circumstances we may be required to collect government-related identifiers such as your tax file number. We will not use or disclose this information unless we are authorised by law.

Contact us

Your Privacy is very important. Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about our privacy policies and procedures.

You can contact us by using the details below:

The Manager
Synergy Home Loans Suite 5, QV Centre 7 High Street
Launceston Tas 7250
Telephone 03 63317474
Email: support@synergyhomeloans.com.au

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy may change. We will let you know of any changes to this policy by posting a notification on our website.
The information contained on this page and on this website is general information only and should not be relied on as specific advice for your particular circumstances or as a substitute for professional advice.