Bigstone Capital Pty Ltd ABN 44 603 289 658
Bigstone Lending Pty Ltd ABN 86 623 564 072

Your privacy is important to us, and we know that it is important to you.

This privacy policy explains how we collect, use and protect your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. By accessing our websites, you consent to us collecting, maintaining, using and disclosing personal information about you.  We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, and will display the current version on our website www.bigstone.com.au. 

Collection

We may collect and hold personal information about individuals, including name, address, phone numbers, email addresses, occupation, bank account details, drivers’ licence details, credit information (if expressly authorised).

We generally collect your personal information directly from applications, questionnaires and other forms you complete and provide to us, from information you disclose to us on the phone, in correspondence, or in person, or from third parties.

If we are provided with personal information about you from a third party, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that you are or have been made aware of the matters set out in this Privacy Policy. You may also appoint us as your agent to obtain credit information about you from a credit reporting body or credit provider, to assist us in providing services to you.

We will only collect sensitive information about you with your express consent or if exempted by the Australian Privacy Principles, such as if the collection is required or authorised by law.

If the personal information we request is not provided, we may not be able to provide you with our services.

We may receive unsolicited personal information about you. We destroy all unsolicited personal information, unless the personal information is relevant to the purposes for which we collect your personal information.

We may collect personal information from our websites bigstone.com.au, bigstonecapital.com.au, bigstone.co, bigstone.loans, bigstone.investments and bigstone.market (the Websites) and when we receive emails and online forms. We may also use third parties to analyse traffic at that web site, which may involve the use of cookies.  A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a website’s computer and stored on your computer’s hard drive.  They are used to collect statistical information in addition to allowing us to re-identify you.

We may collect credit-related personal information about you, including:

• credit reports from credit reporting bodies (“CRBs”);
• your credit application history with us and other credit providers, including the type and amount of credit you have applied for, the start and end date of that credit;
• repayment history information, including whether you owe any payments to us or another credit provider that are overdue;
• credit ratings, scores and evaluations about you and your credit worthiness;
• Information about any judgment of an Australian court that has been made against you and relates to credit that was provided to, or applied for, by you, including whether you have been declared bankrupt or have been subject to insolvency;
• whether we have accessed your credit information previously;
• information about any payments owed by you as a borrower or guarantor in connection with consumer credit that remains overdue for more than sixty (60) days;
• payment information about you including whether any overdue payments have been paid;
• Information recorded in the National Personal Insolvency Index relating to your bankruptcy, a debt agreement proposal given by you, a debt agreement made by you, a personal insolvency agreement executed by you, a direction given, or an order made, under the Bankruptcy Act that relates to your property or an authority signed under the Bankruptcy Act that relates to your property;
• publicly available information about you that relates to your activities in Australia and your credit worthiness, and that is not court proceedings information about you.

The CRBs that we deal with to obtain credit reports, and to whom we may disclose your personal information (not consumer credit information) include:

Equifax Website: www.equifax.com.au Phone: 138 332 Address: Equifax, PO Box 964, North Sydney, NSW 2059	Illion Website: www.illion.com.au Phone: 1300 734 806 Address: Attention: Illion Public Access Centre, PO Box 7405, St Kilda, VIC 3004
Creditorwatch Website: www.creditorwatch.com.au Phone: 1800 738 524 Address: Creditorwatch, GPO Box 4029, Sydney, NSW 2001

If we do not collect your personal information and credit information, we may decline to provide commercial credit to you or an organisation or entity you are involved with.

Holding your information

We will seek to ensure that your personal information (including credit information) is protected from inference, misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, whether held by us or by our service providers locally and overseas.

Your personal information may be stored by a third party data storage providers, and may be combined or linked to other information held about you in a client file. Computer stored information is protected through the use of passwords, and we limit access to your personal information to those staff members and third parties who need to know, in order to conduct our business, and service your account.  Where we no longer require the personal information for the purpose we collected it for, we will take reasonable steps to destroy it.

Purpose of collection

We may collect, hold, use and disclose your information (including credit information):

• to help us provide our products and services to you and to administer, monitor and evaluate those products and services,
• to protect our business and other clients from fraud or unlawful activity;
• to conduct our business and perform other management and administration tasks;
• to assist you with your queries and consider and evaluate any concerns or complaints you may have;
• to manage any legal actions we are involved in and comply with applicable laws; and
• to help us improve the products and services offered to our clients, and to enhance our overall business.

Our service providers may handle your personal information, and we prohibit them from using that information other than for the specific purpose for which we supply it.

Wherever possible, we will attempt to de-identify sensitive information we use. We will take reasonable steps to delete all personal information about you when it is no longer needed.

Accessing and correcting your information

You may gain access to the personal information that we hold about you (including credit information) by contacting us, and we will either provide you with access within 30 days, or, if we refuse to provide the information, we will provide you with reasons why we have refused.  We require that you verify your identity before we provide you with your personal information, and that you clearly specify the information you want access to.

We encourage you to contact us to update any personal information we hold about you, so that we can correct it. If we correct information that has previously been disclosed to another entity, we will notify the other entity within a reasonable period of the correction. Where we are satisfied that the information is inaccurate, we will take reasonable steps to correct the information within 30 days, unless you agree otherwise. We will not charge you for correcting the information.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose personal information (including credit information) to a related body corporate, an agent, contractor or service provider we engage to carry out our functions and activities, such as our lawyers, accountants, debt collectors or other advisors, organisations involved in a transfer or sale of all or part of our assets or business, organisations involved in managing payments, including payment merchants and other financial institutions such as banks, regulatory bodies, government agencies, law enforcement bodies and courts, financial product issuers and credit providers, and anyone else to whom the individual authorises us to disclose it or is required by law.

We will not send personal information to recipients outside of Australia unless:

• we have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient does not breach the Act, the Australian Privay Principles and the Privacy (Credit Reporting) Code 2014;
• the recipient is subject to an information privacy scheme similar to the Privacy Act; or
• you consent to the disclosure

We may disclose your personal information to our service providers that are based overseas, particularly in Germany and the USA.

Analytics

We use cookies, and other technology, to store your preferences, record session information (such as loan estimates), and record user-specific information on which of our pages you access.  We may also use third party cookies, such as those provided by Google, to help us refine our marketing and messaging through inline advertising.  The information we collect is used to provide you with services, improve the content of our website, and may be used to contact consumers for marketing purposes.  If you prefer not to make this information available, you can opt-out of our advertising features through settings in your browser or via Google’s opt out plugin found online.  If you do not accept a cookie, it may impact the effectiveness of our website.

Questions and complaints

If you have any questions about our privacy procedures, or if wish to make a complaint about how we have dealt with your personal information (including credit information) you may lodge a complaint with us:

by writing to:

• Bigstone Finance
  Level 4, 37 Pitt Street,
  Sydney NSW 2000,
• or by emailing info@bigstone.com

You can also refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:

• by telephoning 1300 363 992
• by writing to Director of Complaints, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, GPO Box 5218, SYDNEY NSW 2001
• by emailing enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Important Consents

By agreeing to this Policy, you consent to the following (If you do not wish to provide your consent to any of the matters listed below, please contact us immediately.)

• You agree to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information (including credit-related information) in accordance with the Privacy Policy.
• You agree to us using and disclosing your personal information to develop products and services you may be interested in, and to provide you with information about our other products and services. You can tell us that you no longer wish to use or disclose your personal information for these purposes by contacting us on 1300 363 992.
• You agree to the disclosure of your personal information (including credit-information) to entities located outside Australia. You acknowledge that by providing this consent, APP 8.1 will not apply to the disclosure (which means that we will not be obliged under the Privacy Act to take reasonable steps to ensure that an overseas recipient does not breach the APPs and we may not be liable under the Privacy Act if the recipient does not act consistently with the APPs).
• You agree to us obtaining credit related-information about you from a credit reporting agency (including where you are a borrower applying for commercial credit or a guarantor).
• You agree to us disclosing credit-related information about you to a person for the purpose of that person considering whether to offer to act as guarantor in relation to the credit or to offer property as security for the credit or to any person who is a guarantor or has offered security in relation to credit provided by us to you.
• You agree to us disclosing your personal information (including credit-related information) to another credit provider for the purpose of assessing your application for credit or for any other purpose permitted by the Privacy Act.
• You agree that we can disclose your name, residential address and date of birth to a credit reporting body so that the credit reporting body can provide an assessment to us of whether the information provided by you matches (in whole or in part) the information in the credit reporting body’s possession or control (which may include personal information held by the credit reporting body about you or other individuals). This will be done for the purpose of verifying your identity as required under Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism laws where applicable. If you would prefer us to use another form of verification, such as your passport or driver’s licence, you must notify us and provide us with any information that we request.
• If we verify your identity using electronic sources, we will pass on your information to external organisations in order to electronically match your information with identification data on their databases including Commonwealth and State government departments that issued or hold records relating to your identification document.