Privacy Policy

About CBS Finance

CBS Finance understands how important it is to protect your privacy and the security of your personal information. This policy sets out our commitment in respect of your personal information and how we manage this.

All of our Australian businesses follow the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breach scheme established under the Act. CBS Finance's Australian businesses include CBS Finance and its subsidiaries.

In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" means all of CBS Finance's Australian businesses.

Our commitment to protect your privacy

We protect your information, and our aim is to be clear and open about what we do with it.

Any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have collected or as allowed under the law. It is important to us that you are confident that any personal information we hold about you will be treated in a way which ensures protection of your personal information.

Periodically we will update our privacy policy. You can always find the most up-to-date version on our websites. By using our services, you consent to the terms of this Policy and agree to be bound by it.

What Information do we collect?

We collect most personal information directly from you, whether in person, on the phone, electronically or if you deal with us in some other way.

When we refer to personal information we mean information or an opinion from which your identity is reasonably apparent. Typically this will refer to:

Identification Information - this may include your name, date of birth, address, account details, employment history, qualifications and any other information we may need to identify you.
Financial Information - this typically includes details such as your tax file number and bank account, superannuation or insurance policy information. If we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file 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.
Credit related information - information such as details relating to credit history, credit capacity, and eligibility for credit ('credit worthiness').
Sensitive Information - the personal information we collect may also include sensitive information — such as information about your religion, ethnicity, health or criminal record. The Privacy Act protects your sensitive information and we will generally only collect this information from you if it is reasonably necessary and with your consent.

Over the course of our relationship with you, we may also collect and hold additional personal information about you, including transactional information, complaint or enquiries about your product or service.

Why we collect your personal information

We collect your personal information primarily for the purposes of:

Assessing your application for finance and managing that finance
Managing our relationship with you and others, including lenders
Ensuring we meet the relevant regulatory requirements & comply with all relevant laws
Improve our service to you and your experience with us
For the purposes of direct marketing and managing our relationship with you
To offer you other products and services by ourselves or from other organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us that we feel will be of value to you - if you do not wish to receive this information, you may decline to receive this by contacting us and we will take all reasonable steps to meet your request at the earliest possible opportunity.

Do we disclose your personal information?

We will only disclose that information that is required, and take all reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is handled in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles.

We may disclose your personal information:

to other parts of CBS Finance or related entities;
to industry bodies, referees or identity verification services;
to our panel lenders;
to other organisations that are involved in managing or administering our services such as third party suppliers;
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 lawyers and accountants;
to anyone, where you have provided us consent;
where we are required to do so by law or;
to investors, agents or advisers, or any entity that has an interest in our business;

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.

Transfer of Information Overseas

We may disclose personal information to our related entities, third party suppliers and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.

Further, we will only transfer personal information we have collected about you overseas, if permitted to do so under the Australian Privacy Principles.

We may disclose your personal information to entities located outside of Australia, including the following:

our data hosting and other IT service providers, located in various countries; and
other third parties located in various foreign countries, including New Zealand, the Philippines & USA.

Your personal information may also be stored in the cloud in an overseas country. As electronic or networked storage can be accessed from various countries via an internet connection, it is not always practicable to know in which country your information may be held.

In the event that a disclosure is made in an overseas country, while they will often be subject to confidentiality or privacy obligations, they will not always follow the particular requirements of Australian privacy laws.

Updating, accessing & correcting 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.

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.

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. An explanation will be provided to you if we deny you access to the personal information we hold about you.

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. 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. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal information within 30 days.

If for any reason we refuse to correct personal information we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting the information.

How do we protect your information?

We store information in different ways, including in 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.

We keep personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected or to comply with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or document retention requirements.

All CBS Finance employees have confidentiality requirements and access to your information is restricted to those employees whose job requires that information.

Access to our premises are controlled and computer systems have electronic security systems such as firewalls and data encryption.

We will also take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify your personal information when your personal information is no longer required for our business purposes.

Complaints & Further Information

If you are dissatisfied with how we have dealt with your personal information we want to hear from you. You can contact our complaints officer via the contact link on our website.

We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days. We will provide you with a decision on your complaint within 30 days.

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.

You may also request further information about the way we manage your personal information by contacting us.

Last updated: December 2024