OUR COMMITMENT TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY

LJ Hooker Home Loans Pty Ltd (ACN 106 564 765 and Australian Credit Licence Number:
380270) and our related bodies corporate collectively referred to as, LJHHL; its franchisees, loan writers, credit representatives, and contractors also referred to in this Policy as “us,” “we” and “our” understands and respects that protection of your personal information is important to you.  This document sets out how we collect, use, disclose, retain and manage your privacy information and how we comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act).

We understand how important it is to protect your personal information.  This document sets out our Privacy Policy commitment in respect of personal information that you may provide to us.

We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes indicated in our policy, where we have your consent to do so, or as otherwise required or authorised by law.  It is important to us that you are confident that any personal information we collect from you; or is received by us will be treated with appropriate respect ensuring protection of your personal information.

Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and any other relevant law.

WHO IS LJHHL?

LJHHL is an organisation that offers financial products and related credit assistance provider services within the mortgage and broader financial services industry.  We facilitate the processing and assessment of information in respect of loan applications.  We may also market other products.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

When we refer to personal information we mean information or an opinion about you, from which you are, or may reasonably be, identified.  The personal information we hold about you may also include credit information.

Credit information is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with credit and may include any finance that you have outstanding, your repayment history in respect of that credit, and any defaults.  Usually, credit information is exchanged between lenders and credit reporting bodies.

The kinds of personal information may include (but is not limited to) your name, date of birth, driver’s licence number, marital status, phone number, email address, address, nationality, employment history, income, assets, liabilities and repayment history information.

If you are applying for credit we may also collect other information such as the ages and number of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time at your current address, your employment details and proof of earnings and expenses.

Due to the nature of the services provided by us, some of the information we collect may be sensitive information, including details about your race or ethnic background.  For example, you may be asked to provide information about whether or not you are an Aborigine or Torres Strait Islander or if you are applying for insurance we may ask you information about pre-existing medical conditions.

It is not common practice for us to collect other sensitive information about you (such as information about your health, religion, trade union membership, political opinion, sexual preference, or criminal record), unless such information is required in order to process an application for a loan.  We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent.

WHY WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect and receive personal information about you in order to conduct our business and to provide our services, including facilitating credit assessment for you to obtain approval for credit, arranging or providing credit, providing and managing the credit, insuring the credit, other direct marketing of products, accrediting you as a business partner, broker or introducer of loans and other products (if applicable).  From time to time we, or our originators or other organisations with whom we are affiliated may offer you other products and services.

HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We may collect personal information from you in a number of circumstances, including where you:

• make an enquiry with us via email or telephone;
• lodge a loan enquiry or request a quote through our website;
• apply to be a borrower or guarantor;
• attend an event hosted by us;
• franchise purposes, including assessment of franchise applications and management of our franchises;
• loan writer purposes, including assessment of loan writer applications and management of our franchises including compliance of loan writers;
• credit representative purposes, including assessment of credit representative applications and management of our franchises including compliance of credit representatives;
• apply for employment with us; or
• apply for accreditation as a business partner, aggregator, franchisee, loan writer or credit representative.

Where reasonable and practical we will collect your personal information directly from you. However, we will also collect information about you from third parties, such as a partner, attorney or spouse who contacts us on your behalf, from our contractors who supply services to us, through our business partners and referrers (such as mortgage originators and brokers), from a publicly maintained record or from other individuals, credit reporting bodies or companies authorised by you.

Indirect collection of information occurs each time you visit our Website our server collects some anonymous information, known as click-stream data, including the type of browser and system you are using, the address of the website you have come from and move to after your visit, the date and time of your visit and your server’s IP address. We may collect this information for statistical purposes to find out how our Website is used and navigated, including the number of hits, the frequency and duration of visits and most popular session times. We may use this information to evaluate and improve the Website’s performance.

A Cookie is a piece of information that our web server may send to your machine when you visit our Websites. The Cookie is stored on your machine, but does not identify you or give us any information about your computer.  A Cookie helps us to recognise you when you re-visit the Website and to co-ordinate your access to different pages on the Website. With most Internet Browsers, you can erase Cookies from your computer hard drive, block all Cookies, or receive a warning before a Cookie is stored. If you want to do this, refer to your Browser instructions or help screen. If you do not provide the information requested by us, we may not be able to provide you with our services.

HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We use your personal information for the purpose for which it has been provided, for reasonably related secondary purposes, any other purpose you have consented to and any other purpose permitted under the Privacy Act.  This may include using your personal information for the following purposes:

• to provide you with the products or services you’ve requested;
• to verify your identity;
• to assess, process and manage your application to be a borrower or guarantor, including to verify your details and assess our risk;
• to provide you with credit and manage that credit;
• to assess, process and manage your application for employment;
• for complaints handling or data analytics purposes;
• to manage our relationship with you; or
• to assess, process and manage your application to be a business partner, aggregator, franchisee or guarantor, loan writer or credit representative including to verify your details and assess our risk.

TO WHOM WILL WE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

To enable us to maintain a successful business relationship with you, we may disclose your personal information to:

• organisations that provide products or services used or marketed by us, including other credit providers, mortgage intermediaries (such as mortgage brokers, mortgage originators and mortgage managers), funders, lenders, valuers, trustee companies, financial institutions and securitisers, mortgage insurers, title insurers, surveyors, credit reporting agencies, rating agencies and debt collectors;
• other organisations that are involved in managing or administering your credit;
• your employer/s or referees, your guarantors, your professional advisors, your bank or anyone else where you have provided consent;
• any other organisation that may have or is considering having an interest in your loan, or in our business;
• companies and contractors who we retain to provide services for us, such as information and infrastructure systems IT contractors, call centres, stationery printing houses, mail houses, storage facilities, credit assessors, loan processors, debt collectors, lawyers, accountants and auditors, outsourced compliance specialists who will need to have access to your personal information to provide those services;
• people considering acquiring an interest in our business or assets;
• where we are required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money or Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) or the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth); or
• other individuals or companies authorised by you.

We may disclose your personal and credit information to overseas entities that provide support functions to us, such as compliance and loan processing services.  You may obtain more information about these entities by contacting us.

Prior to disclosing any of your personal information to another person or organisation, we will take all reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that:

• the person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to our commitment, or
• you have consented to us making the disclosure.

CREDIT INFORMATION

We may collect the following kinds of credit information and exchange this information with credit reporting bodies and other entities:

• credit liability information, being information about your existing finance which includes the name of the credit provider, whether the credit provider holds an Australian Credit Licence, the type of finance, the date the finance is entered into, the terms and conditions of the finance, the maximum amount of finance available, and the day on which the finance was terminated;
• repayment history information which is information about whether you meet your repayments on time;
• information about the type of finance that you are applying for;
• default and payment information; and
• dispute resolution or court proceedings information.

We exchange this credit information for the purposes of facilitating the assessment of your application for credit and managing that credit.

This credit information may be held by us in electronic form on our secure servers and may also be held in paper form.  We may use cloud storage to store the credit information we hold about you.

When we obtain credit information from a credit reporting body about you, we may also seek publicly available information and information about any serious credit infringement that you may have committed.

NOTIFIABLE MATTERS

The law requires us to advise you of ‘notifiable matters’ in relation to how we may use your credit information.  You may request to have these notifiable matters (and this privacy policy) provided to you in an alternative form.

We exchange your credit information with credit reporting bodies.  We use the credit information that we exchange with the credit reporting body to facilitate the assessment of your creditworthiness and to facilitate the assessment of your application for finance and managing your finance.

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 then we may disclose this information to a credit reporting body.

You have the right to request access to the credit information that we hold about you and make a request for us to correct that credit information if needed.  Please see the heading Access and Correction of your Personal and Credit Information, below.

Sometimes your credit information will be used by credit reporting bodies for the purposes of ‘pre-screening’ credit offers on the request of other credit providers.  You can contact the credit reporting body at any time to request that your credit information is not used in this way.

You may contact the credit reporting body to advise them that you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud.  For a period of 21 days after the credit reporting body receives your notification the credit reporting body must not use or disclose that credit information.  You can contact any of the following credit reporting bodies for more information:

• https://www.equifax.com/personal/contact-us
• https://www.illion.com.au/contact-us
• https://www.experian.com/corporate/corporate-contacts

DIRECT MARKETING

From time to time we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about mortgage loans, special offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company we are associated with.  By providing us with your personal information, you consent to us using your information to contact you on an ongoing basis for this purpose, including by mail, email, SMS, social media and telephone.

If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such information by contacting our Privacy Officer on the contact details below.  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.

UPDATING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

It is important to our relationship 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 (including your credit related personal information or details as to whom is authorised to act on your behalf) that we hold about you, you should contact us to have it updated.  We will generally rely on you to assist us in informing us if the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete.

ACCESS AND CORRECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL AND CREDIT INFORMATION

We will provide you with access to the personal and credit information we hold about you, subject to limited exceptions in the Privacy Act as outlined below.  You may request access to any of the personal or credit information we hold about you, at any time, using the details specified below.

We may charge a fee for our reasonable costs in 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.

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

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 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 information within 30 days.

We may need to consult with other entities as part of our investigation.

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

DENIED ACCESS TO PERSONAL OR CREDIT INFORMATION

There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal information.  For example, such a situation would be information relating to an existing or anticipated legal proceeding with you, or if your request is vexatious.

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

USING GOVERNMENT IDENTIFIERS

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.

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.  Such a situation would be where you make general inquiries about interest rates or current promotional offers.

HOW SAFE AND SECURE IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT WE HOLD?

We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information, including your credit-related personal information by storing it in a secure environment, and when the information is no longer needed for any purpose for which the information may be used or disclosed, it will be destroyed or permanently de-identified.

We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

FURTHER INFORMATION AND COMPLAINTS

You may request further information about the way we manage your personal information or lodge a complaint by contacting our Privacy Officer on the contact details below.

We will acknowledge your complaint as soon as practicable but within seven days.

We will deal with the complaint by investigating the complaint, and providing a response to the complainant within 30 days, provided that we have all necessary information and have completed any investigation required. In cases where further information, assessment, or investigation is required, we will seek to agree alternative time frames with you.

If you are dissatisfied with the response of our complaints officer you may make a complaint to our External Dispute Resolution Scheme, Australian Financial Complaints Authority, which can be contacted on 1800 931 678, info@afca.org.au , www.afca.org.au , or the Privacy Commissioner which can be contacted on either www.oaic.gov.au or 1300 363 992.

CONTACT DETAILS

You can contact us by calling LJ Hooker Home Loans Head of Compliance on 1300 515 200 or by writing to:

LJ Hooker Home Loans Pty Ltd (ACN 106 564 765)
Suite 114C / 84 Hotham Street, Preston VIC 3072

Alternatively, you can email us at:   msmith@ljhookerhomeloans.com.au

CHANGE IN OUR PRIVACY POLICY

We are constantly reviewing all of our policies and intend to keep them up to date with market expectations.  Technology is constantly changing, as is the law and market place practices.

As a consequence we may change this Privacy Policy from time to time as the need arises.

This Privacy Policy last updated in September 2024.