Privacy Policy - New Zealand

“Personal Information”, as referred to in this policy, has the meaning set out in the Privacy Act. It means information about an identifiable individual (for example, name and date of birth), and it also includes “Credit Information” as defined in the Privacy Code (Credit Information) (for example, your payment history, amount of credit provided and credit scores).

The Personal Information we may collect about you will depend on the circumstances, including, for example, your relationship with Avanti (e.g. whether you are a customer or an employee) and (if applicable) the type of financial product or service being applied for or provided (e.g. a consumer or business loan).

This information we may collect could include:

• key Personal Information such as your full name (and any other previous names you have been known by), date of birth, residential, business and postal addresses, telephone numbers, email and other electronic addresses, driver licence number and passport number;
• financial, credit and related information such as:
  • your occupation, income and type of employment or the type of work you do, your expenses, assets and liabilities (including those over which we may take security), dependants, financial and business position and dealings, and other relevant events;
  • bank account and bank/credit card details (including card number, account number and expiration date);
  • your transaction/repayment history with us or relevant third parties (and the capacity in which you dealt with us or them); and
  • information about your credit history, the amount of credit extended by other lenders, credit scores and any information obtained in order to carry out a credit check.
• other relevant information – depending on the circumstances, this may also include health and medical information (e.g. if it is relevant to a hardship request), membership of professional bodies, tax file number information, other government identifiers (e.g. to verify your identity), and any other information you share with us about your personal or business situation;
• transactional information – for example, information relating to:
  • your use of our product(s);
  • your interactions with us, including when you call or otherwise correspond with us; and
  • your payment history.
• behavioural biometric data that includes behavioural analytics on how you use and access our websites and any mobile apps that we use now or may develop for use in future;
• online/device information – information collected if you use our websites, customer portal and/or apps (if available) and social media profiles, which can include: your social media handles; session data that is automatically collected and transmitted by our apps, such as your device IP address and geolocation data (using GPS data of your device, the nearest Wi-Fi access points and mobile networks), the operating system and browser your device used to view the website or app, brand and model of your device, unique identifiers of your device, name and parameters of your network connection, time, duration and date of your visit and pages you viewed, device call history, and information and metadata about other applications installed on your device including application names, application identifiers and version, device identifier and checksum.

If you do not wish to provide us with your Personal Information (including Credit Information), we may not be able to provide our products or services to you, respond to or assist with your queries or be able to provide you with full access to all features of our products or services.

We will generally collect your Personal Information directly from you or from someone who is acting on your behalf. This may include collecting information from your device/s when you access our websites, portals or apps (if available), or social media profiles and when you contact our call centre(s). Some of this information may be collected using cookies (please see section 11) or other tracking technology. However, there are also certain instances in which we’ll collect information about you from third parties, particularly where it’s unreasonable or impracticable to collect it directly from you. Third parties from whom we may collect your information from include:

• third parties you authorise to act on your behalf or that are otherwise connected with you (such as a financial adviser, your accountant or legal representative, a referee);
• introducers, such as advisers, brokers, and motor vehicle dealers;
• as applicable, any co-applicant, co-borrower and/or guarantor or security provider;
• your past or present employers, accountant, referees, banks, landlords, lawyers, financial advisers, or others with whom you have previously had dealings or persons assisting you, who you direct to provide information to us;
• other Avanti Group entities that may have information about you;
• credit reporting agencies and other credit providers who may have Credit Information about you, relevant to us, including to check your credit and assess your creditworthiness, on an ongoing basis;
• identification service providers who may have identification information about you for the purpose of fulfilling our requirements under Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) legislation (AML/CFT Legislation);
• other agencies involved in (or in partnership with us in connection with) the provision of a relevant product or service being obtained from us;
• publicly available sources (e.g. internet sources or a search of white pages);
• other service providers we may deal with, including external mail houses, debt collection agencies, private investigators, professional advisers;
• data and analytics products providers who provide us with access to credit related data;
• public and subscriber-only databases;
• any person considered necessary in our view to carry out your instructions; and
• government agencies including, but not limited to, the NZ Customs Services, the Ministry of Justice, Department of Corrections, New Zealand Police, the Ministry of Social Development (including Work and Income), Immigration New Zealand, Inland Revenue Department, Kāinga Ora (and related agencies), NZTA’s Driver Check service, Housing New Zealand Corporation, Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Commerce Commission.

Personal Information we collect about you will only be held, used and disclosed as is reasonably necessary for our business purposes and as permitted by law. Purposes for which we’ll usually hold, use and disclose your Personal Information, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the products and services you’re obtaining from us, include:

• providing products and services to you;
• deciding whether to provide a product or service requested or applied for, including verifying your credit history, evaluating your creditworthiness, or deciding whether to accept you as a guarantor (if applicable);
• the ongoing monitoring of creditworthiness, including relating to your current credit obligations and financial position, your payments and any defaults;
• detecting and preventing instances of fraud, unlawful conduct, and other risks to you or our products and services;
• providing other related products or services to you, by us and/or relevant and trusted third parties;
• responding to certain enquiries relating to any insurance policy or other credit related policy offered by a third-party service provider in connection with our products or services;
• ensuring fast and accurate approval and processing of applications and requests;
• managing the products and services that we provide to you and managing any account you have with us;
• dispute and complaint resolution, and assisting other credit providers to do the same; and
• enforcing our rights, including the collection of outstanding payments and, where necessary, initiating legal proceedings;
• complying with our obligations, including ongoing participation in the credit reporting system by providing Credit Information to credit reporting agencies – (information disclosed by us to credit reporting agencies may be listed in their systems, used by them to provide their credit reporting services or other information services, and supplied to their customers on an ongoing basis in line with the Code);
• assisting customers in meeting their credit related obligations;
• dealing with serious credit infringements and assisting other credit providers to do the same;
• verifying your identity as may be required from time to time by AML/CFT Legislation;
• providing your behavioural biometric data to a third party for the purposes of digital identity protection and fraud prevention;
• verifying your identity using electronic sources. In order to do so, we’ll ask you for your details (such as your name, address and date of birth) and details of your identification documents, which will be passed to external organisations to electronically match your information with identification data on their databases;
• complying with New Zealand laws and regulations that may specifically require us to collect your Personal Information and any overseas laws where collecting your information is necessary for us to comply with our obligations;
• sharing Personal Information with law enforcement agencies where we reasonably believe it’s necessary to comply with the law or to assist in the prevention, detection or investigation of fraud, money laundering or other criminal offences;
• assisting us in managing our businesses, undertaking review and maintenance of our systems and infrastructure, complying with our internal operational requirements, such as for credit or risk management, product or system development and planning, insurance, audit and administration purposes;
• undertaking securitisation activities and other activities relating to capital and funding requirements, including fulfilling reporting requirements;
• improving the quality of and ensuring the safety of our websites, portals and apps (where applicable) and of the services provided;
• identifying you and your device so that we can make our services available to you;
• customer data analytics, which may be provided to or shared with third parties which we have an alliance, partnership or arrangement with;
• improving the products and services we provide you. This may include, for example, using Personal Information, including transaction data, to obtain customer insights and monitor customer trends;
• undertaking research and development regarding potential future products and services;
• compiling statistical data, e.g. credit scoring information;
• for training, quality control and verification purposes;
• for recruitment purposes, including assessing a candidate’s suitability for a position with us;
• developing an understanding of the products and services you may be interested in receiving from us (Avanti), our related entities, and trusted partners or third parties with which we do business;
• Marketing products and services provided by us, our related entities, and trusted partners or third parties, including by sending notifications, requests, and other information (including, for example, by mail, email, telephone (including SMS), in portal or app messages/notifications and social media platforms) about the products and services we or they provide, unless you tell us, or them, not to.

Opting out/unsubscribing from marketing or promotional communications

If you don’t want Avanti to send you any marketing or promotional materials by email or SMS, you can opt out of these services by following the unsubscribe instructions in the promotional message itself or by calling our Customer Service team. In the near future, we hope to provide you with the ability to change your marketing preferences in our customer portal. We’ll let you know if this service is available.

If you don’t want one of our trusted parties or third parties to send you marketing or promotional materials, you will need to opt out of these services with them directly.

If you want to stop receiving notifications on certain websites or social media, you may need to adjust your device or online privacy settings.

Important note on service communications:

Even if you opt out of marketing and promotional communications, there are certain service, operational and other correspondence that we are required to send you about our products and services (e.g. to advise you of changes to certain terms and conditions).

Where the Privacy Act permits, we may share your Personal Information (including Credit Information) with third parties for the purposes outlined above. These external organisations will record, use and disclose your information in accordance with their own privacy policies and legal obligations. Some organisations to whom we may disclose your Personal Information (including your Credit Information or credit eligibility information) will be located overseas (known as cross border disclosure). The countries where overseas recipients may be located include Australia, India, Ireland and the United States. Third parties that we may share your Personal Information with include:

• as applicable, any co-applicant, co-borrower and/or guarantor or security provider, or to the extent required by law, any other party who otherwise has an interest in the product or the service we have provided to you or the security related to that product or service;
• third parties you authorise to act on your behalf or that are otherwise connected with you (such as a financial adviser, your accountant or legal representative, a referee or an access seeker acting on your behalf to obtain your credit report);
• for the avoidance of doubt, any members of the Avanti group of companies, including those identified in this privacy policy;
• our related entities and trusted partners or third parties with which we do business, including with which we have a partnership, affiliation, arrangement or agreement;
• entities who wish to be involved in our business or acquire an interest in our business;
• entities or persons involved in arrangements that provide funding to us, including investors, advisers, trustees and rating agencies (including whom we may be required to provide reporting to periodically);
• credit reporting and rating agencies, including on an ongoing basis;
• entities that provide services to us, such as external communication providers (i.e. mailing, email or SMS services), social media platforms, IT providers, professional advisers, providers of financial services to us, market research and data providers, and insurance providers;
• introducers (including advisers, brokers, motor vehicle dealers and retailers);
• the supplier of any goods or services financed with credit and/or services we provide;
• our assignees or potential assignees, or where we act as an agent for, or otherwise on behalf of, another person, to the principal or that other person;
• other financial institutions or entities such as banks and other credit providers;
• insurers, assessors, underwriters;
• identification service and fraud prevention providers;
• debt collection agencies and other enforcement bodies;
• external dispute resolution schemes, for example, if a complaint is made about us;
• organisations involved in debt assignment or securitisation and other relevant funding arrangements;
• government regulatory bodies in New Zealand and overseas; and
• law enforcement agencies.

As described above, your Credit Information may also be shared where relevant. Where the Privacy Act permits it, we may disclose your Credit Information to credit reporting agencies for the purposes outlined above. Credit reporting agencies may include the information we provide to them in their reports in order for them to assess your creditworthiness. If you fail to meet your payment obligations to us or commit a serious credit infringement, we may be entitled to disclose that information to credit reporting agencies. Credit reporting agencies must comply with the Credit Reporting Privacy Code – further information on the Code and your rights with respect to the credit reporting system can be found at www.privacy.org.nz.

We will hold your Personal Information in electronic form on our systems, but we may also hold some paper or other physical records. Service providers may also hold Personal Information for us. Your Personal Information is protected by various physical, electronic and procedural safeguards. Where a service provider holds your information, we require those service providers to adhere to our approved standards of security and confidentiality to ensure your Personal Information is protected. Staff who handle your Personal Information are provided with training on how to do so appropriately. Our procedures ensure that your Personal Information is only available to staff where necessary. We will also only keep your Personal Information for as long as necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was collected or as required by law. If we no longer need your Personal Information, we’ll destroy the information or remove any identifying information so it can no longer be linked to you.

You have the right to request access to and correction of any Personal Information we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions under the Privacy Act. You’re entitled to specify how you wish to access your Personal Information so long as this is reasonable and practicable. We take every reasonably practicable step to ensure that the Personal Information we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you want access to your Personal Information or make a request for correction of Personal Information, you can contact us via the channels outlined below in Section 14 of this privacy policy.

We verify the identity of anyone requesting access to Personal Information to ensure that we don’t provide that information to a person or people who don’t have the right to access that information. If we don’t agree to your request for correction or are unable to provide you with access to certain Personal Information we hold about you for legal reasons, we’ll give you notice of this, outlining our reasons and what next steps you can take. We may charge you our reasonable costs of providing you copies of your Personal Information and/or attaching a statement of correction to your Personal Information.

If you provide us with Personal Information about any other person, for example, a referee, a co-applicant, a person authorised to speak with us on your behalf, another director, a shareholder or beneficial owner, you confirm that, prior to disclosing information about them to us, you have received their consent to do so. You also confirm that, prior to disclosing their Personal Information to us, you have made them aware of:

• The fact you’re providing this information to us;
• The reason you’re providing their information to us; and
• This Privacy Policy, including, in particular, our reasons for collecting, using and disclosing Personal Information and our contact details.

A. Cookies

A cookie is a small text file placed on your internet-connected device by a website to capture information about your visit. Cookies allow us to recognise you when you return. They also help us provide a customised experience. In many cases, the information we collect using cookies and other tools is only used in a non-identifiable way, without reference to Personal Information. For example, we use the information we collect about website users to optimise our websites and to understand website traffic patterns. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to websites. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it and its partners to serve advertisements to you based on your visit to sites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting Google’s advertising opt-out page. (Alternatively, you can opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page. You can use Ads Settings to manage the Google ads you see and opt out of interest-based ads. Even if you opt out of interest-based ads, you may still see ads based on factors such as your general location derived from your IP address, your browser type and recent, previous searches related to your current search.)

B. Use of cookies for advertising and analysis

Our websites and mobile apps may use a range of third-party cookies, such as digital platform plugins and Google Analytics, as remarketing tools to advertise to you online or understand your website browsing behaviours.

The information may be used to serve you relevant ads or content in relation to our products or services when you visit our websites and third-party websites and apps. The information we collect and share with third parties is anonymous and aggregated. It does not include personal information which is likely to identify you.

C. Opting out

You can control the tailored advertising you see online by changing the cookie settings on your social media accounts or the websites you visit.

You may need to turn cookies off separately on each device and browser you use to access online content. You can generally do this via your browser settings.

It’s worth knowing that turning cookies off may mean the websites you visit have limited functionality and the advertising you see is generic (or less relevant to you).

Our websites or communications you receive from us may contain links to other websites. These websites may have their own privacy policies in relation to your Personal Information, and we have no responsibility for linked websites or their communications with you and provide them solely for your information and convenience. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our websites and to read the privacy policy or statement of each website you visit.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy and/or a concern or complaint about the way we have handled your Personal Information, please contact us using the details below:

Phone:   0800 803 003

Email:    privacy@avantifinance.co.nz

Post:
Avanti Finance Limited
Attention: Privacy Officer
33 Broadway Newmarket
Auckland, 1023

Once we receive your complaint, we’ll respond to you within a reasonable period of time, usually within 20 working days. Please note, that where your complaint relates to your Credit Information, we may consult with a credit reporting body or other credit provider in order to investigate and resolve your complaint. Depending on the type of complaint, it may also be necessary for us to consult with other third parties. If we don’t satisfactorily handle your complaint, you may wish to contact the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz.