How we handle your information.

Our commitment

Open and transparent, by default.

We manage personal information, including credit information, in an open and transparent way. When we collect your information we tell you what we are collecting, who we may disclose it to, and what we use it for.

Priyank Thakkar is our Privacy Officer and is responsible for access requests, corrections and privacy complaints. Everyone at Prevail Finance is briefed on our obligations under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles. We review this policy at least annually and will give you a copy free of charge, in a format that suits you, on request.

What we collect

The information we collect, and why.

We collect personal information so that we can:

Personal information

Your name, contact details, date of birth, residency status, occupation and employment history, and where it is relevant to a credit assessment, your family and relationship circumstances, dependants and living arrangements. From time to time we receive documents containing government identifiers, including tax file numbers. We do not use or disclose those identifiers except where the law requires or permits it.

Financial information

Information about your financial position for the purpose of an assessment: bank and transaction statements, tax returns and financial statements, business records including BAS and management accounts, details of your assets, liabilities, income and expenses, and information about the business or property involved in the transaction.

Credit information

Where a credit assessment requires it, credit reporting information obtained from credit reporting bodies. This can disclose repayment history, current and previous credit accounts, defaults and overdue payments, and publicly available information including court proceedings and insolvency. We use it to assess whether you are likely to be able to obtain and service the credit you are seeking. We do not obtain a credit report, and no lender sees your file, until you tell us to proceed.

Sensitive information

We do not seek sensitive information as a matter of course and we do not use it for marketing. Occasionally sensitive information becomes relevant to an assessment, for example where a health circumstance explains a change in income or a hardship arrangement. We collect it only directly from you, only with your consent, and use it only for the purpose you gave it to us for.

Wherever we can, we collect information directly from you: on a call, in a meeting, through a form on this website, or in documents you send us. Where you consent, or where the law allows, we may also collect information from your accountant, solicitor, broker, a referrer, a lender, or a credit reporting body.

Who we give it to

Disclosure of your information.

We disclose personal information only where it is necessary for the purpose you gave it to us for, where you have consented, or where the law requires it. In practice that means:

Unsolicited information

If we receive personal information we did not ask for, we decide whether we could have collected it lawfully for one of our purposes. If we could not, we destroy or de-identify it.

Overseas disclosure

Some of the software we use to run the business stores information in the cloud, and those servers, or the support teams who maintain them, may be located outside Australia. Because networked storage can be accessed from more than one country, it is not always practicable to identify every country in which your information may be held. Where we disclose information overseas we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Government identifiers

We do not use government related identifiers, such as a tax file number, to identify you. We may receive them inside documents you provide, and we do not use or disclose them except as required or authorised by law.

Keeping it safe

Security, accuracy and how long we keep it.

We take reasonable steps to protect your information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Those steps include access controls on our systems, encryption in transit and at rest for the documents you send us, restricting file access to the people working on your matter, multi-factor authentication, and keeping any paper records secured.

We rely on you to help keep your information accurate and current, and we will correct our records when we learn something has changed. We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it, or as long as the law requires us to, which for credit activities is generally seven years. After that we take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it.

Contact and currency

How to reach us.