Privacy Policy

• Why we are collecting that personal information
• Who else we might disclose that personal information to
• What may happen if individuals do not provide personal information to us
• How to gain access to that information

• Employment details and employment history;
• Details of your financial needs and objectives;
• Details of your investment preferences and aversion or tolerance to risk;
• Details of your current financial circumstances, including your assets and liabilities (both actual and potential), income, expenditure, etc;
• Information about your employment history, employment circumstances, family structure, commitments and social security eligibility;
• Any other relevant information including medical history and/or reports required for the purposes of risk insurance.

Unless you are informed otherwise, the personal information we hold is used for the provision of financial planning and credit assistance advice and services and reviewing your ongoing needs. We may also use your personal information for secondary purposes such as enhancing customer service and product options, handling your complaints and giving you ongoing educational information, newsletters or opportunities that we believe may be relevant to your financial needs and circumstances.

We also use the personal information we collect about our clients to fulfil our legal obligations.

We will only disclose personal information to third parties for primary purpose. We will not release your information for any other purpose unless permitted by the Privacy law and with your consent you may provide the consent in writing or via telephone.

Depending on the product or service concerned and particular restrictions on sensitive information, this means that personal information may be disclosed to:

• Other areas within the GPS Wealth group who provide financial and other services
• Financial planners, brokers and those who are authorised by GPS Wealth to review customers’ needs and circumstances from time to time
• Service providers and specialist advisers to GPS Wealth who have been contracted to provide GPS Wealth with administrative, financial, insurance, accounting, legal, information technology, research or other services
• Other insurers, credit providers, courts, tribunals and regulatory authorities as agreed or authorised by law
• Credit reporting or reference agencies or insurance investigators
• Organisations in connection with the sale or proposed sale of all or part of the GPS Wealth’s and/or your adviser’s business and to the use of that personal information by those organisations for those purposes
• AUSTRAC, the government agency who oversees Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing. Before we arrange products or services we are required to validate client identity. We will request and copy some personal documents only for that purpose. Also we are required to provide details of certain transactions and entities where we hold reasonable suspicion of suspect matters.
• External dispute resolution bodies to handle your complaint

Generally, we require that organisations outside GPS Wealth who handle or obtain personal information as service providers to GPS Wealth acknowledge the confidentiality of this information, undertake to respect any individual’s right to privacy and comply with the privacy law.

Any personal information provided to us may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside Australia, including but not limited to New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, United Kingdom, Philippines, India and the United States of America. Details of the countries we disclose to you may change from time to time. You can contact us for details. Personal information may also be processed by staff or by other third parties operating outside Australia who work for us or for one of our suppliers, agents, partners or related companies.

When we send information overseas, in some cases we may not be able to take reasonable steps to ensure that overseas providers do not breach the Privacy Act and they may not be subject to the same level of protection or obligations that are offered by the Act. By proceeding to acquire our services and products you agree that you cannot seek redress under the Act or against us (to the extent permitted by law) and may not be able to seek redress overseas. If you do not agree to the transfer of your personal information outside Australia, please contact us.

We take reasonable steps to protect the information we retain from misuse, loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We will not retain any of your information for any longer than it is required by us, except to satisfy legal requirements. We will destroy or de-identify your personal information when it is no longer required.

We also ensure data security and privacy by:

• Ensuring that personal records and documentation remains separated on a person by person / client by client basis
• Taking necessary steps to ensure that we protect any personal information that we obtain. We have controls in place where only certain groups or certain levels of authority can access particular information
• Not disclosing your information to third parties, unless there has been prior written consent by you
• Ensuring that your client files are stored appropriately in a secure place
• Maintaining client confidentiality. Although advisers are the main people that will deal with your information, if GPS employees or officers have access to any client information it must be kept confidential at all times
• Not revealing or discussing any suspicious transaction reports that may have been made about a client and are being investigated, except where required by law

If advisers receive any legal requests for you, for example, from authorities such as ASIC, the Family Law Courts, the Australian Police, they should contact GPS Wealth Head Office immediately before disclosing any information.

We may use and disclose personal information for the purposes for which it was provided or secondary purposes in circumstances where you would reasonably expect such use or disclosure.

We may disclose personal information to third parties or external contractors carrying out functions and duties for and on behalf of GPS Wealth Ltd. It is a condition of our agreement with each of our external contractors that they adopt and adhere to this privacy policy.

The information we collect from you may also be disclosed to third parties if the disclosure is required by or permitted by law or in accordance with the rules and policies of the Association of Financial Planners.

In the event that we propose to sell our business we may disclose your personal information to potential purchasers for the purpose of them conducting due diligence investigations. Any such disclosure will be made in confidence and it will be a condition of that disclosure that no personal information will be used or disclosed by them. In the event that a sale of our business is affected, we may transfer your personal information to the purchaser of the business. As a client you will be advised of any such transfer.

You may have the right to access and request corrections of the personal information held by us. You may access the personal information we retain and request corrections. This right of access is subject to some exceptions allowed by law.

We will not provide you access to personal information which would reveal any confidential formulae or the detail of any in-house evaluative decision making process, but may instead provide you with the result of the formulae or process or an explanation of that result.

GPS Wealth Ltd reserves the right to charge a fee for searching for and providing access to your personal information. In the event we refuse you access to your personal information, we will provide you with an explanation for that refusal.

We will endeavour to ensure that at all times the personal information about you that we hold is up to date and accurate. The accuracy of the personal information is dependant to a large degree on the information you provide and you should advise us if there are any errors in your personal information.

In some circumstances we are required to collect government identifiers, for example, your Tax File Number (TFN). We will not use or disclose this information other than when required to do so by law or, when consented to by you.

We require that after collection TFN's are kept appropriately and safely. It is permissible under section 17 of the TFN Guidelines to retain TFNs where there is an on-going requirement on condition that:

• TFNs are held in a secure environment; and
• TFNs are destroyed when they are no longer required.

You may deal with us anonymously where it is lawful, practicable and reasonable to do so.

Some personal information we hold is ‘sensitive’. Sensitive information typically relates to a person’s racial or ethnic origin, membership of political associations or trade unions, religious affiliations, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, health information, medical and genetic history.

Sensitive information is usually needed for applications for personal insurance and to manage claims on those products. It may also be relevant to credit and other applications. It is GPS Wealth’s policy that sensitive information will be used and disclosed only for the purposes for which it was provided, unless the customer agrees otherwise or the use or disclosure of this information is allowed by law. Documents asking for sensitive information will explain this and we will only collect sensitive information from you where reasonably necessary for us to provide a service to you and with your consent, or in limited other circumstances specified under privacy laws.

In the future we may consider the sale or restructure of our business or the purchase of the business of other financial advisers. In such circumstances it may be necessary for your personal information to be disclosed to permit the parties to assess the sale or restructure proposal for example through a due diligence process. We will only disclose such of your personal information as is necessary for the assessment of any sale or restructure proposal and subject to appropriate procedures to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal information. In the event that a sale or restructure proceeds, we will advise you accordingly.

We may only use your personal information, including any email address you give to us, to provide you with information and to tell you about our products, services or events or any other direct marketing activity (including third party products, services and events which we consider may be of interest to you) with your consent. Without the limitation just described, if it is within your reasonable expectations that we send you direct marketing communications given the transaction or communication you have had with us, then we may also use your personal information for the purpose of sending you direct marketing communications which we may consider may be of interest to you.

You are able to visit our website without providing any personal information. We will only collect personal information through our websites with your prior knowledge for example where you submit an enquiry or application online.

Email addresses are only collected if you send us a message and will not be automatically added to a mailing list.

A cookie is a small string of information that a website transfers to your browser for identification purposes. The cookies we use may identify individual users.

• Cookies can either be “persistent” or “session” based. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer, contain an expiration date, and are mainly for the user’s convenience.
• Session cookies are short-lived and are held on your browser’s memory only for the duration of your session; they are used only during a browsing session, and expire when you quit your browser.
• We may use both session and persistent cookies. This information may be used to personalise your current visit to our websites or assist with analytical information on site visits.
• Most internet browsers can be set to accept or reject cookies. If you do not want to accept cookies, you can adjust your internet browser to reject cookies or to notify you when they are being used. However, rejecting cookies may limit the functionality of our website.

If you wish to complain about any breach or potential breach of this privacy policy or the Australian Privacy Principles, you should contact us by any of the methods contained in this policy statement or at the address below and request that your complaint be directed to the Privacy Officer. Your complaint will be considered within seven days and responded to accordingly. It is our intention to use our best endeavours to resolve any complaint to your satisfaction.

To make a complaint, please forward it in writing to:

The Privacy Officer
GPS Wealth Ltd
GPO Box 4463
Sydney, NSW 2001

Or email to: privacy@gpswealth.com.au

However, if you are unhappy with our response, you are entitled to contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner who may investigate your complaint further. You can make a Privacy Complaint through this link (https://www.oaic.gov.au/individuals/how-do-i-make-a-privacy-complaint).