Well Home Loans Policy for Credit Information
This policy applies in addition to our Privacy Policy and sets out details of our handling of personal information obtained from credit reporting bodies and certain other consumer credit-related personal information described below.
What is Credit Information?
Credit Information is another type of Personal Information that relates more about your finances including credit liability information about any existing finance, information about how you have repaid your debts in the past (known as your repayment history); information about the type of finance that you are applying for; whether or not there have been any defaults and payment information; and information about any court proceedings.
Exchanging your information with Credit Reporting Bodies
When you apply to us for credit or propose to be a guarantor, we need to know if you’re able to meet repayments under your agreement with us. We also want to avoid giving you further credit if this would put you in financial difficulty. One of our checks involves obtaining a credit report about you.
Credit Checks
A credit report contains information about your credit history which helps credit providers assess your credit applications, verify your identity and manage accounts you hold with them. Credit reporting bodies collect and exchange this information with credit providers like us and other service providers.
The Privacy Act limits the information that credit providers can disclose about you to credit reporting bodies, as well as the ways in which credit providers can use credit reports.
What information do we collect?
The information that we collect includes your identification details, what type of loans you have, how much you’ve borrowed, whether or not you’ve met your loan payment obligations and if you have committed a serious credit infringement (such as fraud). We may also ask the credit reporting body to provide us with an overall assessment score of your creditworthiness.
Some examples include:
- permitted identification information such as names, date of birth, sex, 3 most recent addresses, employer and driver’s licence number;
the fact that any consumer or commercial credit has been applied for and the amount and type of credit; - details of your current and previous credit providers;
- credit limits and certain terms and conditions relating to credit arrangements;
- start/end dates of particular credit arrangements;
- records of previous requests made by credit providers to credit reporting bodies for information about you in connection with consumer or commercial credit applications, guarantees and securitisation arrangements; repayment history;
- ‘default information’ (in addition to and without limiting repayment history information), i.e. payments overdue for more than 60 days in specified circumstances;
- in relation to those overdue payments, advice about new payment arrangements or that those payments are no longer overdue;
- information about adverse court judgments, personal insolvency records and publicly-available information related to your credit worthiness;
- in specified circumstances that, in the opinion Well Home Loans or another credit provider, there has been a serious credit infringement (e.g. fraud);
- information derived by credit reporting bodies from the above information (e.g. credit scores, ratings and assessments); and
- information we derive from the above information (e.g. our own credit scores, ratings and assessments).
This information may include information about your arrangements with other credit providers as well as with us. We keep credit-related information in physical and electronic records, both at our own premises and with the assistance of our service providers.
How do we use this Information?
We use information from credit reporting bodies to confirm your identity, assess applications for credit, manage our relationship with you and collect overdue payments. We may also use this information as part of arriving at our own internal assessment of your creditworthiness and we will store credit-related information with your other information.
If you fail to meet your payment obligations in relation to any loan that we have provided to you, or any loan that we have arranged for you, or if you commit a serious credit infringement, we may report this to the credit reporting body.
What are your rights?
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 “Accessing and updating your Personal 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.
Parties that we may share information with
In providing you with our services, we may share personal and credit-related information with the following bodies:
Lenders
Perpetual Corporate Trust Limited (ABN 99 000 341 533) of Level 18, 123 Pitt Street, Angel Place, Sydney, NSW, 2000; who can be contacted on +61 2 9229 9000. It’s privacy policy is set out at https://www.perpetual.com.au/privacy-policy.aspx
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited (ABN 11 068 049 178) of 80 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, SA, 5000; who can be contacted on 1300 652 220. It’s privacy policy is set out at https://www.adelaidebank.com.au/other-links/privacy-policy
Pepper Group Limited (ABN 55 094 317 665), who can be contacted on 1300 650 931. It’s privacy policy is set out at https://www.pepper.com.au/privacy-policy
Credit Reporting Bodies (CRBs)
Equifax Pty Ltd who can be contacted on 13 8332. It’s privacy policy and credit reporting policy is set out at https://www.equifax.com.au/privacy-policy-australia and your report can be requested at www.mycreditfile.com.au.
Insurers
Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance Pty Ltd (ABN 60 106 974 305) of Level 26, 101 Miller Street, North Sydney, NSW, 2060; who can be contacted on 1300 655 422. It’s privacy policy is set out at www.genworth.com.au/privacy-policy.
QBE Lenders’ Mortgage Insurance Limited who can be contacted on 1300 367 764. It’s privacy policy is set out at www.qbelmi.com/pg-QBE-Privacy-Policy-Statement.seo
First American Title Insurance Company of Australia Pty Limited (ABN 64 075 279 908) who can be contacted on 1300 362 178. It’s privacy policy is set out at www.firsttitle.com.au/property-owners/privacy-policy
Accessing and updating your Personal Information
We’ll always give you access to your personal and credit related information unless there are specific legal reason for doing so.
You can request this information by contacting us at [email protected] or by any method found in our contact us page or even call us on 1300 899 724.
We may need to talk to you further if you request credit related information and also ask you to contact the credit reporting body to check what information that they hold about you. This is so that we can ensure its accurate and up to date.
Regardless of the type of information that you request, we will need to confirm your identity before we release any information at all.
We try to make your information available within 30 days of your request.
