Privacy Policy

At Wealth Architects we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This Policy describes our current policies and practices in relation to the collection, handling, use and disclosure of personal information. It also deals with how you can complain about a breach of the privacy laws, how you can access the personal information we hold about you and how to have that information corrected.

What information do we collect and how do we use it?

When we provide you with Financial Planning or Insurance Advice, we ask you for the information we need to understand your financial situation, needs and objectives. This can include a broad range of information ranging from your name, address, contact details and age to other information about your personal affairs including information about your assets, financial situation, health and wellbeing. Unless detailed in Part One of this FSG, we provide the information that you provide us to para-planning service providers who are based in Australia only to facilitate the production of advice documents. We may also provide this information to insurers or intermediaries whom we ask to quote for your insurances and to enable them to decide whether to offer you insurance and if so, on what terms.

We also use your information to enable us to manage your ongoing requirements and our relationship with you, e.g. financial reporting, invoicing and client surveys. We may do so by mail or electronically unless you tell us that you do not wish to receive electronic communications. From time to time we will use your contact details to send you offers, updates, events, articles, newsletters or other information about products and services that we believe will be of interest to you. We may also send you regular updates by email or by post. We will always give you the option of electing not to receive these communications and you can unsubscribe at any time by notifying us that you wish to do so. We may also use your information internally to help us improve our services and help resolve any problems.

What if you don’t provide some information to us?

If you do not provide us with some or all of the information that we ask for, we may not be able to advise you on the appropriate financial strategies or insurances.

How do we hold and protect your information?

We strive to maintain the relevance, reliability, accuracy, completeness and currency of the personal information we hold and to protect its privacy and security. We keep personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected or to comply with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or document retention requirements.

We hold the information we collect from you electronically in our client management systems and in hard copy files. In some cases, your file is archived and sent to an external data storage provider for a period of time. We only use storage providers in Australia who are also regulated by the Privacy Act. We ensure that your information is safe by restricting access to our staff members that need to access it and by electronic password for electronic files. We maintain physical security over our paper and electronic data and premises, by using locks and security systems.
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others. We will disclose your information to para-planning service providers and may need to provide your information to contractors who supply services to us, e.g. to handle mailings on our behalf, external data storage providers, document archiving, accounts auditors, claims assessors, debt collectors, professional legal advisers and information technology support service providers or to other companies in the event of a corporate sale, merger, re-organisation, dissolution or similar event. However, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that they protect your information in the same way that we do.

We may also provide your information to others if we are required to do so by law or under some unusual other circumstances which the Privacy Act permits. We will not provide your information to overseas recipients. If you do not pay our fees within our credit terms, we may provide your information to Veda at www.veda.com.au who act as a credit reporting body.

How can you check, update or change the information we are holding?

Upon receipt of your written request and enough information to allow us to identify the information, we will disclose to you the personal (and credit) information we hold about you. We will also correct, amend or delete any personal information that we agree is inaccurate, irrelevant, out of date or incomplete.

If you wish to access or correct your personal (or credit) information please write to your Adviser at the address noted in Part One of this FSG. We do not charge for receiving a request for access to personal (or credit) information or for complying with a correction request. We do not charge for providing access to personal (or credit) information. In some limited cases, we may need to refuse access to your information or refuse a request for correction. We will advise you as soon as possible after your request if this is the case and the reasons for our refusal.
What happens if you want to complain?

If you have any concerns about whether we have complied with the Privacy Act or this Privacy Policy when collecting of handling your personal information, please write to our Privacy Office at Insight Investment Services Pty Ltd , Level 6, 200 Creek Street, Brisbane QLD 4000 or call on (07 3018 0400). We will consider your complaint through our internal complaints resolution process and we will try to respond with a decision within 45 days of you making the complaint.

Your consent

By asking us to assist with your financial planning and insurance advice needs, you consent to the collection and use of the information you have provided to us for the purposes described above.