Privacy Consent and Electronic Authorisation

By agreeing to this Privacy Consent and Electronic Authorisation, you consent to Bridgit Financial Services Pty Ltd ACN 648 580 901, Australian Credit Licence Number 532542, (hereafter we, us or our), our related bodies corporate, affiliates and agents collecting, using, holding and disclosing personal information (including sensitive information) and credit-related information about you. You can find out more about how we deal with your privacy and the personal information (including sensitive information) and credit-related information that we hold about you by viewing our Privacy Policy (https://www.bridgit.com.au/privacy-policy).

Our Privacy Policy (https://www.bridgit.com.au/privacy-policy) contains information about how you may access or seek correction of your personal information and credit-related information, how that information is managed, how you may complain about a breach of your privacy, and how that complaint will be dealt with. It also contains information on 'notifiable matters', including things such as the information we use to assess your creditworthiness, the fact that credit reporting bodies may provide your personal information and credit-related information to credit providers to assist in an assessment of your credit worthiness, what happens if you fail to meet your credit obligations or commit a serious credit infringement (including our right to report a default or a serious credit infringement to credit reporting bodies), your right to request that credit reporting bodies not use your credit-related information for the purposes of pre-screening credit offers, and your right to request a credit reporting bodies not to use or disclose credit-related information about you if you believe you are a victim of fraud. You may request to have these notifiable matters (and this Privacy Policy) provided to you in an alternative form, such as a hard copy.

1. What is Personal Information?

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) defines “personal information” as 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 the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not. 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, including publically available information from public registers and social media. If you are applying for credit, we may also collect the number and ages of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time at your current address, your employment details, and proof of earnings and expenses.

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.“Credit information” means information about you such as your identity information, repayment history, the type and amount of credit provided to you, default and payment information, personal insolvency, court proceedings and any other publicly available information that relates to your credit worthiness. “Credit reporting information” is any personal information derived by a credit reporting body from credit information held about you bearing on your credit worthiness. Credit information and credit reporting information are, together, “credit-related information”.

2. Why Do We Collect Personal Information?

We may collect, use, hold and disclose personal information and credit-related information about you for the purposes of:

  • fulfilling our functions and responsibilities under, and facilitating compliance with, the Anti- Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules and the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and associated regulations (which require and authorise us to collect certain information), including to maintain regulatory and corporate records;
  • providing you with credit and managing that credit, including accepting, assessing and processing your application for a loan and undertaking risk assessments involving credit scoring, identity verification and fraud prevention;
  • managing our relationship with you and allowing us to perform administrative tasks;
  • communicating with you about our products and services, including direct marketing of products, new products and services offered by us; and
  • providing information to third parties as authorised or required by law.

We may collect, use, hold and disclose your sensitive information if it is reasonably necessary for the type of credit we are providing you with.

Your information will be collected and held by us and some of our third party service providers so that we can provide you with a range of services. In some cases, we may receive your personal information or credit-related information from a third party (for example, when we electronically verify your identity with third party providers).

3. What If We Didn't Collect Personal Information?

Without your personal information and credit-related information, we may not be able to process your application for credit, respond to your requests, perform our functions or provide you with some or all of our products and services.

4. Who Can We Disclose Your Personal Information To?

Your personal information may be provided to:

  • credit reporting bodies to obtain a credit report for the purpose of assessing your loan application and managing the consumer credit provided. Information we disclose may include that you have applied for a loan, the amount of the loan, our status as your credit provider, payments that are overdue for more than 60 days, payments that are no longer overdue, when a serious credit infringement has been committed, or that the full amount of your loan has been paid (or your loan has been otherwise discharged). The information we exchange with credit reporting bodies may be included in reports that the credit reporting bodies give other organisations (such as other lenders) to help them assess your credit worthiness. Some of the information may adversely affect your credit worthiness (for example, if you have defaulted on your loan) and, accordingly, may affect your ability to obtain credit from other lenders;
  • third party service providers to verify your identity against the information held on your credit file and to obtain your banking transaction history. We will engage with relevant registries using third party systems to match details contained in your Australian passport, driver licence, Medicare card, birth certificate and any other identification documents you provide us. We will also obtain the last 90 days of bank statements from your account for the purpose of assessing your loan application;
  • any persons who represent you including your finance broker, legal and financial advisers or personal and business referees, including your employer to confirm your employment status and current income;
  • Government entities such as Centrelink, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, AUSTRAC, the Australian Taxation Office or other government departments, agencies or bodies and overseas regulators (if required);
  • any investors, agents or advisers, trustees, ratings agency or businesses assisting us with funding for credit made available to you, or any entity that has an interest in your finance or our business;
  • our subsidiaries, professional advisers, financiers, financial institutions, associates, debt collectors, contractors (including any of our overseas associates who may assist us in providing our products and services to you);
  • other credit licensees (including credit providers, credit assistance providers or lead providers) of a default by you or where we are unable to assist you or consider you may need credit assistance in respect of other consumer credit options available. In this instance, you agree we may disclose your personal information to other credit licensees (who may pay us a fee for referring you to them, though this fee will not be passed onto you) who may either provide a service to you or refer you onto another credit licensee;
  • any person considering acquiring an interest in our business or assets;
  • other financial institutions - for example, to process a claim for mistaken payment;
  • associated businesses that may want to market products to you;
  • any of our associates, related entities or contractors such as claims related providers, including assessors and investigators that help us with claims; and
  • any person where we are authorised to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) or by government and law enforcement agencies or regulators.

5. Overseas Disclosure

We may disclose your personal information and credit-related information to overseas entities, including related entities and service providers located overseas in New Zealand, USA, Canada, India, Ireland, the United Kingdom or the Philippines. Overseas entities may be required to disclose information to relevant foreign authorities under a foreign law. More information on overseas disclosure may be found in the entities' privacy policies.

6. Verifying Your Identity

We may disclose your name, residential address and date of birth to a CRB or other organisation (including the document issuer or official records holder) to verify your identity. That organisation will use this information to give us an assessment/report of whether or not the information we have matches information held by the organisation, and that may involve use of third party systems and services. If we use these methods and are unable to verify your identity in this way, we will let you know. We may also use information about your Australian Passport, state or territory driver licence, Medicare card, citizenship certificate, birth certificate and any other identification documents to match those details with the relevant registries using third party systems and to record the results of that matching. This information may be transmitted to New Zealand.

7. Electronic Authorisation

You consent to receiving notices and other documents electronically. You agree that by giving this consent:

  • we will not send paper copies of notices and other documents to you unless required by law;
  • you must regularly check your nominated email address for notices and other documents;
  • we will send you such documents electronically; and
  • you may withdraw your consent to the giving of notices and other documents by electronic means at any time provided that you submit an alternative method for us to communicate with you.