We are committed to addressing the concerns of our clients. This has led to us creating a Privacy policy to inform clients of how we endeavour to keep their information secure and in what manner we use their personal information. This policy covers personal information that may be gathered via the internet or over the telephone.
Our personal information handling policies
BNC is bound by the National Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988. The Privacy Act and general law place strict requirements on us to treat any personal information that we hold about you as confidential.
This Privacy Policy details how we collect, use, disclose and protect that personal information. This Privacy Policy does not cover personal information collected or held by us about our employees, and is to be read subject to any overriding provisions of law or contract. Personal Information is information or an opinion about you where it is possible to ascertain your identity from that information or opinion.
Collection
What personal information we collect
We are permitted to collect personal information from you under laws relating to corporates, taxation, insurance, money laundering, credit and the provision of financial services. The personal information we collect from you will depend on what services we provide to you and may include any or all of the following:
- your name, address and contact details
- your email address
- your date of birth
- your tax file number
- details of your employment
- details of your annual income and expenditure
- details of your assets and liabilities
- details of your investment objectives and risk profile
- details of associated parties
- details of associated bank accounts
- details of any securities or investments you have given us
- details of specific transactions
- details of health information relating to your insurance requirements
Where we collect the information from
In most instances personal information about you will be collected directly from you in either an application form or documents completed by you, correspondence from you to us, during an interview or from telephone contact. We may also obtain personal and other information from some third parties such as accountants and any other organization who have referred you to us.
When we obtain personal and other information from third parties whom we are referred to by you, we will assume and you will ensure that you have made that third party aware of your referral and the purposes involved in the collection, use and disclosure of the relevant personal or other information. Personal information about you may also be collected from our website but only if you voluntarily provide us with your details (e.g. If you email your contact details to us or if you use a logon and password to access a particular service). When you visit our web site our web server collects the following types of generic non-personal information for statistical purposes:
- your internet service providers address;
- the number of users who visit the web site;
- the date and time of each visit;
- the pages accessed and the documents downloaded;
- the type of browser used;
- the site that referred you to us;
- the site that you went to after you finished visiting us.
- No attempt is made to identify individual users from this information.
The BNC website contains links to the web sites of third parties. If you access those third party web sites they may collect information about you. BNC does not collect information about you from the third parties. You will need to contact them to ascertain their privacy statements.
Uses and disclosure of information
We will only use or disclose the personal information collected about you for the purposes for which it was collected (including one or more of those purposes specified in the Privacy Policy), for related purposes which you would reasonably expect us to use or disclose the personal information for, or where you have consented to us using or disclosing the personal information We use your personal information for the following purposes:
- to open an account for you;
- to maintain account you have with us;
- to process your investment application and other transactions;
- to enable us to assess any request from you for financial advice;
- to enable us to send research information to you;
- to assist you in determining your investment objectives and providing you with investment advice to assist you in achieving these objectives;
- to respond to any specific requests you may make of us;
- to help us assess products that may suit your financial needs;
- to notify you of any products that may be of interest to you;
- to keep you informed on matters that may affect or be related to your investments;
- to advise you of new opportunities that may assist you in achieving your investment objectives;
- to provide you with regular reviews and keep you informed on the performance of your investments;
- to enable us to audit and monitor the services we provide to you;
- to update your personal files;
- to enable us to meet our obligations under law, for example the Australian Taxation Laws;
- any purposes for which the information was requested and any directly related purposes; and
- developing, improving and marketing our products and services.
If you do not provide us with your personal information, we will be unable to do one or more of the above. We will assume you consent to our management of your personal information in the manner specified in this Privacy Policy (which may change from time to time) and our Privacy Statement (which may change from time to time) until you tell us to the contrary by contacting us using the contact details above.
We may disclose your personal information to the following organisations for the purposes specified:
- to related companies of BNC for the purposes of marketing new investment opportunities to you;
- to the Australian Stock Exchange, Options clearing house, funds managers, insurers, share registries and other product providers to establish accounts on your behalf or to process transactions;
- to our bank, when depositing funds to your account;
- to outsourcing organisations contracted by BNC to provide administrative functions and support services on our behalf, for example, IT contractors providing maintenance of our data systems;
- where the disclosure is required by law, for example, to government agencies and regulatory bodies as part of our statutory obligations, or for law enforcement purposes.
You may "opt-out" of receiving direct marketing material
From the information we obtain from you we use some of it to keep you informed of other products, services or opportunities that may be of interest to you or help you achieve your investment objectives. Please contact us using the contact details above if you do not want your personal information to be used for these purposes. We will not disclose information about you to third parties for direct marketing purposes.
Email address
Unless otherwise specified in this Privacy Policy if you provide us with your email address during a visit to our web site it will only be used for the purpose for which you provided it to us. It will not be added to a mailing list without your consent unless the mailing list is directly related to the purpose for which you provided your email address to us. We may use your email address, for example, to provide you with information about a particular service or product or to respond to a message you have sent us. If you subscribe to one of our services and provide your email address to us so we may communicate with you through email, we may also use your email address to advise you of upgrades and changes to those services.
Security and Retention policies
BNC is committed to ensuring the security of personal information that we hold about you. We take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we hold about you is stored securely, whether in a physical or electronic form. If you use the Internet to communicate with us you should be aware that there are inherent risks in transmitting personal information over the Internet. BNC does not have control over the transfer of personal information over the Internet and we cannot guarantee its security. Any personal information we no longer require may be destroyed. An exception to this may be where records are required to be retained by law.
Access and correction
BNC Financial Services strives to ensure all information about you that we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up to date. You may at any time request access to personal information that we hold about you. Please allow 14 days for preparation of file copies. If there is an error with the information or the information is incomplete, you can advise us and we will, where necessary, correct or add information. We will not charge you a fee for your access request but may charge you the reasonable cost of making the information available to you. If we decide not to correct or provide you with access to your personal information, we will give you our reasons for our decision. If you would like access to the personal information we hold about you, please contact us using the appropriate link on this page and you will be advised of our procedures for accessing and correcting personal information (which may vary depending upon the type of personal information).