McMillan Shakespeare Limited (ABN 74 107 233 983) and it's subsidiaries are committed to complying with the National Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). We will implement appropriate procedures to ensure that the privacy and security of your personal information is protected. This privacy policy sets out information about how we handle personal information about clients and prospective clients including:

• the types of personal information we collect;
  
  
• the reasons why we collect personal information; and
  
  
• the manner in which we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information.
  
  

We will only collect personal information relevant to our business relationship with you. In some circumstances your personal information may initially be collected by our agents or service providers acting on our behalf. We must collect certain personal information to be able to provide you with the products or services that you request. If your personal information is not provided, we may not be able to provide you with your requested product or service.

Depending on the nature of the product or service that you request or receive, the types of personal information that we will collect include name, address, contact details, date of birth, employment and financial information (such as your salary and the name and address of your employer), credit card details and information about your use of our products and services.

Unless required by applicable law, we do not collect information about anyone's racial or ethnic background, political opinions, memberships of political associations, professional or trade associations or trade unions, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health. The collection of sensitive personal information is restricted by the provisions of the Privacy Act.

When you use our websites, we collect statistics on the number, date and time of visits, the number of pages viewed and the manner in which you navigate. This information is collected through the use of cookies. Please refer below for more information about cookies.

When you call us, we collect statistics on the number, date and time of your calls, and the manner in which you navigate through our Interactive Voice Recognition system. We may also monitor and/or record telephone calls for the purposes of staff training, verification and record keeping.

We use this information to perform our core business functions. Primarily, we will use your personal information to provide you with the product or service that you have requested, and the administration of that product or service.

We may also use the information to:

• develop new products and services;
  
  
• conduct our internal administration and operations (such as accounting, risk management, record keeping, statistical analysis, marketing, research, planning, systems development, testing and staff training);
  
  
• attend to your enquiries; and
  
  
• send you material about other products and services offered by us.

If it is reasonable and practical to do so, we collect personal information directly from you or from your application form or via telephone or Internet contact. How we collect your personal information will depend upon how we interact with you.

There are occasions on which we may need to collect your personal information from third parties, with or without your direct involvement. Depending on the nature of the product or service that you request or receive, the types of persons or organisations from which we may collect personal information include your employer, market research organisations, third party brokers, credit reporting agencies, government agencies, your representatives, your advisers and other organistations, who jointly with us, provide services to you.

We may need to disclose your personal information to another person or organisation. Except as otherwise explained in this policy, we will only disclose your personal information where we are allowed to or obliged to do so by law or where we have your express or implied consent. You give express consent when you clearly and unmistakably state so in writing or when speaking to us. Implied consent is where we have reasonably assumed you have given consent from your behaviour. For example, consent can by implied when you contact us by telephone and proceed after hearing a recorded message that the call may be recorded for staff training, verification or record keeping purposes. Consent to use of this information is implied by your action of continuing with the call.

Where we disclose your personal information to organisations that perform specific essential services for us, we limit this disclosure to the information that they need to perform the required service. These contractors are bound by the same National Privacy Principles as McMillan Shakespeare. They are only given the right to use the personal information for the specific service or function that they are performing and cannot legally provide or use this information for any other purpose.

Depending upon the products or service that you have requested, we may exchange information about you with, for example:

• your employer;
  
  
• our agents, contractors and external service providers;
  
  
• regulatory bodies, government agencies and law enforcement bodies including CentreLink and the Australian Taxation Office;
  
  
• financial institutions;
  
  
• credit reporting agencies;
  
  
• debt collecting agencies;
  
  
• payment systems operators;
  
  
• agents acting on your behalf, including your legal adviser or financial adviser;
  
  
• your executor, administrator, trustee, guardian or attorney;
  
  
• insurers and reinsurers;
  
  
• superannuation funds;
  
  
• other organisations, who jointly with us, provide products or services to you; and
  
  
• all related bodies corporate within the McMillan Shakespeare group.

In the unlikely event that the assets and operations of our business are sold to another party, our records of personal information will be transferred to that party. This information will remain subject to the same privacy protections as when we first obtained it.

We may use your personal information to offer you products or services that we believe may satisfy your requirements. When we first establish a customer relationship we usually ask you whether or not you are happy to receive information about our products and services. You can notify us at any time, however, if you do not wish to receive these offers. Our contact details are set out below.

We will take reasonable steps and use up-to-date techniques and processes to protect your personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

Only employees of McMillan Shakespeare and those who perform services on our behalf are authorised to handle or have access to your personal information. Our employees are bound by both our employment policies and by confidentiality clauses in their employment agreements. Those who perform services on our behalf are also bound by the National Privacy Principles.

Paper documents are protected from unauthorised access or use through the various security systems that we have implemented over our physical premises. We also maintain up-to-date computer and network security systems with appropriate firewalls, encryption technology and passwords to protect electronic copies of personal information. To ensure that the security of your personal information is protected, we ask that you observe the security requirements that relate to the use of your user identification number and/or the password used to access your account details electronically.

We will take reasonable steps to destroy personal information in a secure manner or remove identifying features from it, if it is no longer required by us. This is subject to any legal obligations we have to retain information for a certain period of time.

Under the National Privacy Principles you are generally entitled to access the information we hold about you. In doing this, we will require you to identify yourself to our satisfaction. The type of information you require will determine the length of time we take to respond. We will generally provide your requested information using the same communication method by which it was originally requested.

On occasion we will ask that you put your request in writing. This would include instances where you want copies of material or access to archived information or if the nature of your application makes it necessary for us to retain a record of your request.

You may be able to access some personal information via our customer service websites. Access to personal information via our websites requires the use of your unique user identification number and password. No personal information is openly posted on the Internet. If you have difficulty finding the information you want or in using our websites, please advise us.

In some circumstances, we may charge a service fee to retrieve your information, based on our costs (internal and external) in locating the information and the form of response you require. If we intend to charge a service fee we will give you an estimate of this fee so that you can confirm that you still want us to proceed with your request. We do not impose any charge for submitting a request for access.

Under the National Privacy Principles we are entitled to refuse you access to your information in certain circumstances. For example, you may not be able to access personal information that:

• would reveal personal information about another person or commercially sensitive material; or
  
  
• we are prevented by law from disclosing.

In order to protect your personal information online, we use up-to-date and secure technology methods. When we capture your personal information it is passed through our secure server using encryption technology which scrambles the personal information to ensure it is protected over the Internet. Stored personal information about you is further protected from unauthorised access through the use of multiple firewalls, secure passwords and sign in processes.

We cannot guarantee the policies and procedures of any other websites that may be linked from our website. They may or may not comply to the same privacy standards that we do and, therefore, you should take care to evaluate their particular privacy standards and procedures as needed.

Information that we collect as to the activity on our websites through the use of 'cookies' may identify an individual. This information is only used to validate access to our websites and for other purposes noted above.

Please tell us. We want our records to be accurate, complete and up to date. Unless we disagree with you about the accuracy or completeness of a record, we will generally correct it upon request, (or suggest alternative arrangements for updating our records). If at any point we disagree, we will provide you with a comprehensive response stating the reasons.

If you believe that we have not complied with our obligations concerning your personal information, we invite you to contact us and lodge a complaint. Please refer to the contact details below.

We will aim to resolve your complaints when we are first contacted by you. If we cannot immediately resolve it, we will take the following steps:

• advise you who is handling the complaint; and
  
  
• keep you informed of the progress with respect to resolution of the complaint.

If your compliant is still not resolved to your satisfaction, you can contact the Officer of the Privacy Commissioner
on 1300 363 992.

Calls Us
Privacy Officer: 1300 123 123

Email Us
privacy@maxxia.com.au

Write To Us
The Privacy Officer
McMillan Shakespeare Limited
Locked Bag 18
Collins Street East
Melbourne VIC 8003

We reserve the right to review and amend this Privacy Policy from time to time and to notify you by posting an updated version on this website.