Wisr Privacy and Credit Reporting Policy
Who are we?
This is the privacy and credit reporting policy of Wisr Finance Limited ACN 119 503 221 Australian Credit Licence and Australian Financial Services Licence No. 458572, Wisr Services Limited ACN 616 806 949 and our related businesses we, us and our. It sets out how we collect, use and disclose the personal information including credit-related information we hold about you including, in relation to the services and products we provide to you.
Our commitment to protect your privacy
We understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document sets out our policy in respect of the personal information including credit-related information we hold about you and what we do with that information. While we are required to collect some types of personal information to meet our legal obligations, we do take reasonable steps to keep our collection of your personal information to what is necessary to offer you the products and services you require.
We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have collected it for 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.
Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles, the Privacy Act 1988 Cth, the Privacy Credit Reporting Code 2014 where applicable Privacy Laws and any other relevant law.
Personal information
When we refer to ‘personal information’, we mean information from which your identity is reasonably apparent. This information may include information or an opinion about you. The personal information we hold about you may also include credit-related information.
‘Credit-related information’ means:
‘credit information’, which is information which includes your identity, the type, terms and maximum amount of credit provided to you including when that credit was provided and when it was repaid, repayment history information, financial hardship information including information that any repayments are affected by a financial hardship arrangement, default information including overdue payments, payment information, new arrangement information, details of any serious credit infringements, court proceedings information, personal insolvency information, and publicly available information; and
‘credit eligibility information’, which is credit reporting information supplied to us by a credit reporting body CRB, and any information that we derive from it.
We use your credit-related information to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance. Usually, credit-related information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and CRBs.
The personal information we may collect about you includes your name, date of birth, address, driver's licence, Medicare and passport numbers, bank account details, email address, occupation and any other information we need to identify you. When you engage with us or our digital platforms or use our services , we may collect information about your location or activity, including your IP addresses and the dates and times of visits, information regarding purchases that you make from the spending account linked to your Wisr account, information about your spending and/or saving activities from the bank accounts linked to your Wisr account and information about your income, savings, debts and investments provided through your use of our products.
If you apply for finance with us, we may also collect the ages and number of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time you have resided at your current address, your employment details, proof of earnings and expenses. We may also collect from you financial information about your spouse or partner and, if you provide such information, you warrant that you are authorised by them to provide that information to us and to consent to us using and storing that information.
Why we collect your personal information
We collect personal information so that we are able to provide one or more of the following services to you:
verifying your identity to ensure we know who you are, which may include checking with the document issuer or official record holder via third party systems;
Providing products or services to you and/or our customers; acting as your access seeker to obtain your credit scores and credit history information;
assessing your application for finance and managing that finance this will only occur where you have commenced an application for finance with us;
managing our relationship with you; and
direct marketing of product and services which may be of interest to you you can choose to opt out of this at any time.
Improvements in technology also enable organisations like ours to collect and use information to get a more integrated view of our customers.
From time to time we may offer you other products and services.
How do we collect your personal information?
Where reasonable and practical, we will collect your personal information directly from you. We may also collect your personal information from CRBs, finance brokers, your financial institution, government services, and other people such as accountants and lawyers.
We also collect personal information from you when:
you access and/or submit information through our websites, Wisr mobile or digital apps, such as when you create an account or a Wisr profile, retrieve log-in information, or request a new password;
you submit an application form for a product or service provided by us;
submit information through information collection pages on our websites;
you register for subscriptions to mail outs including via email, newsletters, updates, or other related information/publications through our websites,Wisr mobile or digital apps;you use our websites, Wisr mobile or digital apps, in which case our system may automatically collect information relating to your visit;
you contact us via our websites,Wisr mobile or digital apps email or phone, or you request that we or our content providers or associates contact you;
you make purchases from the spending account linked to your Wisr App account;
You make purchases through, move money between bank accounts linked to any of our mobile or digital apps;
and you participate in our promotions.
If we receive information about you from someone else, we will take reasonable steps to ensure you are aware that we have collected personal information about you and the circumstances of the collection.
Disclosing your personal information
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.
We may disclose your personal information to overseas entities that provide support functions to us, including but not limited to USA, Canada, India, Ireland, the United Kingdom or the Philippines. You may obtain more information about these entities by contacting us. Where we do this, we make sure appropriate data handling and security arrangements are in place.
We may disclose your personal information:
to prospective funders or other intermediaries in relation to your finance requirements;
to other organisations that are involved in managing or administering your finance, such as third party suppliers, printing and postal services, call centres, lenders, mortgage insurers, trade insurers and CRBs;
to associated businesses that may want to market products to you, which you can choose to opt out of at any time;
to companies that provide information and infrastructure systems to us;
to our agents, contractors and external service providers we outsource certain functions to, such as debt recovery, office administration, loans processing, information technology support and bank account transaction analysis providers;
to any person who represents you, such as finance brokers, lawyers and accountants;
to anyone where you have consented;
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; or
to investors, agents or advisers, or any entity that has an interest in your finance or our business;
service providers that are involved in providing our products and services to you, such as independent contractors and consultants, off-site security storage providers, and providers of electronic funds transfer or direct debit services, account monitoring account aggregation and identity verification services;
organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us; or
to your employer, referees or identity verification services.
Credit-related information
If you have commenced an application for finance with us, we may collect, use and disclose credit-related information for the purposes of assessing your application for finance and managing that finance. If you create a Wisr profile, we may collect, use and disclose credit-related information for the purposes of managing your profile.
This credit-related information may be held by us in electronic form on our secure servers and may also be held in paper form.
When we obtain credit eligibility information from a CRB about you, we may also seek publicly available information and information about any serious credit infringement that you may have committed.
We exchange your credit-related information with CRBs. We may use the credit-related information that we exchange with the CRB to confirm your identity, provide you with your credit score for your information, assess your creditworthiness, assess your application for finance and manage your finance.
The information we can collect and disclose includes your identification details, what type of loans you have, how much you have borrowed, whether you have met your payment obligations, whether you have entered into a financial hardship arrangement either with us or some other third party and if you have committed a serious credit infringement such as fraud.
Notifiable matters
The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit-related information. You may request to have these notifiable matters and this policy provided to you in an alternative form.
If you fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any finance that we have provided or arranged or you have committed a serious credit infringement, we may disclose this information to a CRB.
You have the right to request access to the credit-related information that we hold about you and make a request for us to correct that credit-related information if needed. See ‘Access and correction to your personal and credit-related information’ below for further information.
Sometimes your credit-related information will be used by CRBs for the purposes of ‘pre-screening’ credit offers on the request of other credit providers. You can contact the CRB at any time to request that your credit-related information is not used in this way.
You may contact the CRB to advise them that you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud. The CRB must not use or disclose that credit-related information for a period of 21 days after the CRB receives your notification. You can contact any of the following CRBs for more information:
Equifax Limited – www.equifax.com.au
illion Australia Limited – www.illion.com.au
Experian Australia Limited – www.experian.com.au
Direct marketing
From time to time we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company with whom we are associated.
If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such information by phoning us on 1300 992 007, emailing us at contact@wisr.com.au, or by writing to us at Level 4, 55 Harrington Street, The Rocks, NSW 2000. If the direct marketing is by email, you may also use the unsubscribe function. We will not charge you for giving effect to your request and will take all reasonable steps to meet your request at the earliest possible opportunity.
How long we keep your personal information
We generally keep your personal information for up to 7 years after you stop being a customer of ours. We may keep your personal information for longer, for example to fulfil legal or regulatory obligations and/or to respond to a question or complaint.
Updating 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.
If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, you may contact us. We will generally rely on you to ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate or complete.
Access and correction to your personal and credit-related information
We will provide you with access to the personal and credit-related 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.
Depending on the type of request that you make, we may respond to your request immediately. Otherwise, we usually respond to you within seven days of receiving your request. We may need to contact other entities to properly investigate your request.
There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal or credit-related information – for example, if the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, if your request is vexatious, or if the information is commercially sensitive.
An explanation will be provided to you if we deny you access to the personal or credit-related information we hold about you.
If any of the personal or credit-related information we hold about you is incorrect, inaccurate or out-of-date, you may correct this through Wisr mobile or digital apps or by phoning us on 1300 992 007 or emailing us at contact@wisr.com.au.
If appropriate, we will correct the personal information at the time of the request. Otherwise, we will provide an initial response to you within seven days of receiving your request. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal or credit-related information within 30 days.
We may need to consult with other finance providers or CRBs or entities as part of our investigation.
If we refuse to correct personal or credit-related information, we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting the information.
Business without identifying you
In most circumstances, it will be necessary for us to identify you in order to successfully do business with you. However, where it is lawful and practicable to do so, we will offer you the opportunity of doing business with us without providing us with personal information – for example, if you make general inquiries about our products and services or current promotional offers.
Sensitive information
We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent. 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.
Security of your personal information
We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information in paper and electronic form. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
We may use cloud storage to store the personal information we hold about you. The cloud storage and the IT servers may be located outside Australia.
Our Internal Dispute Resolution Scheme
Wisr respects consumers’ rights to lodge a complaint, either written, verbal or online
All complaints will be handled in a courteous manner. For complainants who require additional help to lodge a complaint, Wisr will provide appropriate assistance.
Wisr will acknowledge receipt of a complaint within one business day and will investigate the complaint promptly.
A response explaining the outcome of the complaint and the reasons for it will be provided in most cases within 30 days or within 21 days if the complaint involves hardship.
In some circumstances, Wisr may request additional information from the complainant in which case additional timescales will apply. You can raise a complaint with Wisr by:
• Telephone: 1800 340 008 complaints - free call
• Email: contact@wisr.com.au
• Writing: Attention : Dispute Resolution Officer, Level 4, 55 Harrington Street, The Rocks, NSW 2000
Our External Dispute Resolution Scheme
If an issue has not been resolved to your satisfaction, you can lodge a complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority AFCA. AFCA provides fair and independent financial services complaint resolution that is free to consumers.
Website: www.afca.org.au
Telephone: 1800 931 678 free call
Email: info@afca.org.au
In writing to: Australian Financial Complaints Authority, GPO Box 3, Melbourne VIC 3001
Further information
You may request further information about the way we manage your personal or credit-related information by contacting us.
Change to this privacy and credit reporting policy
We are constantly reviewing all of our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations. Technology is constantly changing, as is the law and marketplace practices.
Therefore, we may change this policy from time to time or as the need arises. We will post any changes to this policy on our website.
You may request this policy in an alternative form by phoning us on 1300 992 007 or emailing us at contact@wisr.com.au.
This policy was last reviewed in March 2024.