Privacy Policy

The privacy of your personal information has always been important to us at Austax. In addition to complying with existing laws that govern confidential information that you provide to us, we are also required to comply with the Australian Privacy Principles. We will always seek to comply with the Australian Privacy Principles as well as other applicable laws affecting your personal information.

This privacy policy outlines our policy on how we manage your personal information. It also sets out generally what sort of personal information we hold, for what purposes and how we collect, hold, use and disclose that information.

Collecting Your Personal Information

Your personal information will be collected and held by Austax for the purposes of:

providing you with the advisory services that you have requested;
managing our relationship with you; or
contacting you about products and services in which you may be interested.

You can let us know at any time if you no longer wish to receive direct marketing offers, by contacting us directly via phone, email and/or clicking the unsubscribe link where available. We will process your request as soon as practicable.

To enable your accountant to provide you with advice you request that is suitable for your financial situation and particular needs we need to obtain and hold personal information about you. This includes:

your name, contact details and date of birth;
employment details and history;
financial details including information about your financial needs and objectives, your current financial circumstances including your assets and liabilities, income, expenditure, insurance cover and superannuation;
any other information that we consider necessary.

The personal information collected may include sensitive information such as health information and memberships of professional or trade associations.

If it is reasonable and practicable, we will only collect your personal information from you. Generally, your personal information will be collected when you meet with your accountant in person, provide your accountant with information over the telephone or with written material. We may need to collect personal information from third parties, such as your adviser.

We may receive personal information about you when we have taken no active steps to collect that information. We destroy all unsolicited personal information unless the personal information is relevant to our purposes for collecting personal information.

How Your Personal Information is Held

Your personal information is generally held in client files or a computer database. Your personal information may also be held in a secure archiving facility.

We will seek to ensure that we take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we hold is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Some of the measures that we have adopted are having facilities for the secure storage of personal information, having secure offices and access controls for our computer systems.

We will also take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information that we no longer need for any purpose for which may be used or disclosed under the Australian Privacy Principles.

Using and Disclosing Your Personal Information

Your personal information may be disclosed for purposes related to the provision to you of the advice you have requested. The types of service providers that may be provided with your personal information are:

other financial advisers and organisations involved in providing the financial advice you have requested (which may include ongoing service) such as fund managers who assist us in providing financial advice and paraplanners;
insurance providers, superannuation trustees and product issuers in connection with the provision to you of the financial advice you have requested;
organisations that assist in operating a financial planning business such as those that provide administrative, financial, accounting, insurance, research, legal, computer or other business services;
your representatives or service providers such as your accountant, solicitor, tax agent, stockbroker or bank;
organisations involved in a business restructure or a transfer of all or part of the assets of our business or the due diligence procedures prior to any such sale or transfer;
government authorities and other organisations when required by law; and
organisations that you have consented to your personal information being disclosed to.

Your personal information may also be used in connection with such purposes.

We will seek to ensure that your personal information is not used or disclosed for any purpose other than:

the primary purpose for which it was collected or a purpose that is related to the primary purpose for which it was collected or a related secondary purpose;
where you have consented to the use or disclosure; or
in other circumstances where the Australian Privacy Principles authorise the use or disclosure such as when it is required by or authorised under law.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties who provide services to us, in which case we will seek to ensure that the personal information is held, used or disclosed consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Sharing of information with related entities

We use common cloud-based operating systems across our related entities to store client data. This means that some of the personal information we hold about you will be stored and visible to related entities on our shared customer databases. All personal information stored in these databases are subject to both this Privacy Policy and the Privacy Policies of our related entities and strict information security standards. Our related entities are not authorised to use or disclose your personal information without your consent (other than for direct marketing as set out below).

Direct marketing and how to opt out

Unless you opt-out we may to the extent permitted by law:

use or disclose your personal information to let you know about products and services that we believe may be of interest to you;
market our services to you through third party channels (such as social networking sites), or via other companies who assist us to market our products and services;
conduct these marketing activities via email, telephone, SMS, Instant Messaging, mail, or any other electronic or other means, including targeted advertising through our websites; and
disclose your personal information to our related companies so they can tell you about their products and services.

You can let us know at any time (see ‘Contact Us’) if you wish to opt-out of receiving direct marketing offers from us or our related companies. We will process your request as soon as practicable.

You may also be able to opt-out by following the instructions in particular direct marketing communications.

Organisations outside Australia

Currently, we do not share your information with organisations outside Australia.

Accessing your Personal Information

You can gain access to your personal information that we hold. This is subject to exceptions allowed by law such as where providing you with access would have an unreasonable impact upon the privacy of others. If we deny a request for access we will provide you with the reasons for this decision. To request access please contact us (see “Contacting Us and Privacy Issues” below).

Correcting Your Personal Information

We endeavour to take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you believe that any of the personal information that we hold is not accurate, complete or up-to-date please contact us (see “Contacting Us and Privacy Issues” below) and provide us with evidence that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date.

If we agree that the personal information requires correcting we will take reasonable steps to do so. If we do not correct your personal information we will provide you with the reasons for not correcting your personal information. If you request that we associate with the information a statement claiming that the information is not accurate, complete and up-to-date we will take reasonable steps to comply with this request.

Contacting Us and Privacy Issues

You can obtain further information on request about the way in which we manage the personal information that we hold or you can raise any privacy issues with us, including a complaint about privacy, by contacting us on 07 4725 2384. We are committed to resolving your complaint.