At GARD Insurance Pty Ltd, we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).
This Privacy Policy applies to personal information collected by us and explains how we collect, use, disclose and handle it as well as your rights to access and correct your personal information and make a complaint for any breach of the APPs.
The Privacy Act defines personal information to mean:
"information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not."
"Sensitive information" is a subset of personal information and means:
"information or opinion about an individual's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political organisation, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, health information about an individual, genetic information, biometric information or templates."
The kinds of personal information we collect and hold can vary depending on the services we are providing, but generally includes:
The type of sensitive information we may collect includes:
We only collect personal information by lawful means, where it is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, the services, functions or activities we provide to you.
We will collect your information directly from you or your agents, unless it is unreasonable or impracticable for us to do so, or as otherwise provided under this Privacy Policy.
If we collect personal information about you from someone else, we will take reasonable steps to make you aware of the collection in accordance with the APPs.
We may also obtain personal information indirectly, for example, from another insured if they arrange a policy which also covers you, related bodies corporate, referrals, your previous insurers or insurance intermediaries, witnesses in relation to claims, health care workers, publicly available sources, premium funders and persons with whom we enter into business alliances.
We will obtain your consent before we collect sensitive information. We will limit the collection and use of your sensitive information unless we are required to do so in order to carry out the services we provide to you.
We may hold personal information within our own data storage devices or with a third party provider of data storage. We discuss the security of your personal information below.
We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information where it is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, the services, functions or activities we provide to you. These include our insurance broking services, insurance intermediary services, funding services, claims management services and risk management and other consulting services.
We also collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information where it is necessary to meet our obligations at law, for example, for conducting identity checks required by the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 and other legislation.
We also use and disclose your personal information for direct marketing purposes, which is explained in more detail below.
For example, we need to collect, hold, use and disclose personal information where:
Unless we have obtained your consent, we do not use or disclose personal information for any purpose unrelated to our services and where you would not reasonably expect. Unless we have obtained your consent, we will only use your personal information for the primary purposes for which it was collected.
We disclose personal information to third parties who assist us or are involved in the provision of our services. Your personal information is disclosed to third parties only in connection with the services that we provide to you, or otherwise with your consent. We may also disclose your personal information for direct marketing purposes, explained in more detail below.
The third parties who might receive your personal information can include our related companies, our agents or contractors, insurers, their agents and others they rely on to provide their services and products (e.g. reinsurers), premium funders, other insurance intermediaries, insurance reference bureaus, loss adjusters or assessors, medical service providers, credit agencies, lawyers and accountants, prospective purchasers of our business and our alliance and other business partners.
These parties are prohibited from using your personal information except for the specific purpose for which we supply it to them. We take reasonable steps to ensure that they are aware of the provisions of this Privacy Policy in relation to your personal information.
We also use personal information to develop, identify and offer products and services that may interest you, and to conduct market or customer satisfaction research. From time to time we may develop arrangements with other organisations that may be of benefit to you in relation to promotion, administration and use of our respective products and services. We discuss direct marketing in more detail further below.
We do not use sensitive information to send you direct marketing communications without your express consent.
If we intend to disclose or use your personal information other than for the purposes listed above, we will seek your consent prior to disclosure or use of that information.
If we give third parties (including their agents, employees and contractors) your personal information, we require them to only use it for the agreed purposes.
If the required personal information is not provided, we or any involved third parties may not be able to provide appropriate services or products. If you do not provide the required personal information, we will explain what the impact will be.
Where you provide us with personal information about another person (such as a family member or employee) you confirm that you have notified that person of the collection of their information by us, the purposes for which we collect the information and who we may disclose their information to. You also confirm that the person has consented to the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information by us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
We may disclose your personal information to third parties who are located overseas. This may include disclosing your personal information to related bodies corporate, insurers, reinsurers, professional advisors, technology service providers, or other service providers that assist us in operating our business. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that overseas recipients comply with the APPs or similar privacy standards. However, you acknowledge that we may not always be able to ensure overseas recipients do not breach the APPs or similar privacy standards, and you agree that we will not be liable in such circumstances.
We will take reasonable steps to ensure the security of personal information that we hold from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We may hold your personal information in either electronic or hard copy form. Personal information is destroyed or de-identified when no longer needed or required to be kept by law. When we engage third parties to handle personal information for us, we take contractual measures to ensure that they comply with privacy legislation and our Privacy Policy.
As our website is linked to the internet, and the internet is inherently insecure, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet.
In the future we may consider the sale or restructure of our business or the purchase of the business of other financial services companies. In such circumstances it may be necessary for your personal information to be disclosed to permit the parties to assess the sale or restructure proposal, for example, through a due diligence process. We will only disclose such of your personal information as is necessary for the assessment of any sale or restructure proposal and subject to appropriate procedures to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal information. In the event that a sale or restructure proceeds, we will advise you accordingly.
We may use your personal information, including any email address you give to us, to provide you with information and to tell you about our products, services or events or any other direct marketing activity, including third party products, services and events which we consider may be of interest to you. We may also ask related parties to contact you about services and products which might be of interest to you.
You may request that we not use your personal information for direct marketing.
You are able to visit our website without providing any personal information. We will only collect personal information through our websites with your prior knowledge, for example, where you submit an enquiry or application online.
Email addresses are only collected if you send us a message and will not be automatically added to a mailing list.
A cookie is a small string of information that a website transfers to your browser for identification purposes. The cookies we use may identify individual users.
If you wish to complain about privacy we ask that you contact our office first to help us to assist you promptly.
In order to resolve a complaint, we:
If you have a complaint please write to us at:
Gard Insurance Pty Ltd
Level 13, 227 Elizabeth St
Sydney, NSW 2000
Our Privacy Officer will then attempt to resolve the issue or complaint.
When we make our decision, we will also inform you of your right to take the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) if you are not satisfied. If you do not receive a response from us of any kind to your complaint within 30 days, then you have the right to take the matter to the OAIC (contact details are provided below).
You also have a right in limited circumstances to have your privacy complaint determined by the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). The AFCA can determine a complaint about privacy where the complaint forms part of a wider dispute within the AFCA Rules between you and us or when the privacy complaint relates to or arises from the collection of a debt. We are bound by AFCA's determinations, provided that the dispute falls within the AFCA Rules. Unless exceptional circumstances apply, you have two years from the date of our letter of decision to make an application to the AFCA for a determination. You can access the AFCA dispute resolution service by contacting them at:
The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA)
GPO Box 3
Melbourne, VIC, 3001
T: 1800 931 678
Web: www.afca.org.au
E: info@afca.org.au
If you would like further details of our Privacy Complaints Handling Procedure, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details listed above.
We recommend that you retain this information for future reference.
If you wish to gain access to your personal information, want us to correct or update it, have a complaint about a breach of your privacy, wish to withhold your consent or opt out of providing consent to any of the uses of your information including receiving offers of products or services from us, or have any other query relating to our Privacy Policy, contact our Privacy Officer during business hours on:
T: 02 9182 5835
Level 13, 227 Elizabeth St
Sydney, NSW 2000
We welcome your questions and comments about privacy.
This Privacy Policy is current from 1st November 2018. In the event that this Privacy Policy or any part thereof is amended or modified in the future, the revised version will be available by contacting our office or on our website.
You can also obtain information on privacy issues in Australia on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner ("OAIC") website at www.oaic.gov.au or by contacting the OAIC by email at enquiries@oaic.gov.au or by calling on 1300 363 992.