Privacy
Privacy Policy
At FP Advice Pty Ltd (referred to throughout this document as FP Advice), we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This Policy describes our policies and practices for collecting, handling, storing, using and disclosing personal information. It also deals with how you can complain about a breach of the privacy laws, access the personal information we hold about you and have that information corrected (where necessary).
What personal information do we collect and hold?
When we provide financial planning advice, we ask you for the information we need to understand your personal financial circumstances, establish your goals and objectives and provide professional advice recommendations that are appropriate for your needs.
We collect your information through:
- Fact Find and Risk Profile documents;
- Astute Wheel questionnaires online;
- email, post, and telephone conversations;
- client application forms; and
- file notes taken from our meetings with you, via telephone, video conference or face to face.
This can include a broad range of information from your name, address, contact details and age to information about your personal affairs including medical and health information, family details, your personal financial information, bank account details, investments, superannuation, tax file number, insurances, debts you hold and any other financial or non-financial information that may be required in the provision of our services to you.
We may also collect your information from third parties such as your accountant, lawyer, mortgage broker and other parties if you have authorised us to do so.
We only collect sensitive information, with your agreement, that is relevant to the professional advice we may provide to you such as your country of birth, health and medical background. We will only collect sensitive information where it is necessary for us to do so in order for us to provide professional advice in areas such as ascertaining residency status, life insurance purposes, investment/savings advice, superannuation/SMSF obligations and estate planning needs.
How do we use your information?
We use your personal information to understand your financial situation, formulate our professional advice and assist you to apply for relevant products.
We also use your personal information to manage your ongoing requirements and our relationship with you, e.g. reviewing your financial advice on a periodic basis to ensure that it remains relevant to your changing circumstances. This includes contacting you by mail or electronically (unless you tell us you do not wish to receive electronic communications).
What if you don’t provide information to us?
If you do not provide us with some or all the information that we ask for, we may not be able to provide you with the financial advice you have requested from us, or any advice we do provide may not be relevant for your personal circumstances.
You can contact us without using your name or by using a pseudonym. However we may need your name or contact details to respond to you.
How do we store and protect your personal information?
We strive to maintain the relevance, accuracy and 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 reporting or document retention requirements.
We hold the information we collect from you:
- on servers securely stored in our offices;
- on back-up drives stored securely offsite each day;
- in password-protected mobile devices used by our advisers;
- through our Microsoft 365 suite of business services; and
- in password-protected online cloud storage systems such as IRESS Xplan and Redmap.
We make best efforts to ensure that your information is safe by:
- using Multi-Factor authentication where it is available;
- using secure password management software; and
- contracting a professional IT company to advise us on how to keep our security up-to-date.
We maintain physical security over our paper and electronic data and premises, by using locks and security systems.
Will we disclose your personal information to anyone?
We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others. We will disclose your information to fund managers, life insurance providers, external compliance auditors, legal professionals and other relevant service providers where it is required to do so in order to provide our professional services to you.
We may also need to provide your information to contractors who supply services to us, e.g. to handle mailings on our behalf, external data storage providers, external paraplanners and administrative services, or to other companies in the event of a corporate sale, merger, reorganisation, dissolution or similar event. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that they protect your information in the same way that we do.
We may provide your information to others if we are required to do so by law or under some other unusual circumstances, such as a potential Data Breach Notification, which the Privacy Act permits.
We may disclose your information to companies that have staff and data servers overseas, for example:
- our outsourced Paraplanning provider TDO (established in Australia by ex-financial advisers) with servers and staff in the Philippines for the purpose of preparing your financial plans; and
- our Document Management System provider Redmap (a privately owned Australian company) with servers and staff based also in the Philippines to store your information in electronic cloud servers.
If they are not regulated by laws which protect your information in a way that is similar to the Privacy Act, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that they protect your information in the same way that we do or seek your consent before disclosing your information to them.
How can you check, update or change the information we are holding?
You may ask us for access to your personal information and to correct it at any time.
Upon receipt of enough information from appropriate sources to allow us to identify the information we hold, we will tell you what personal information we hold about you. We will also correct, amend or delete your personal information if we agree that it is inaccurate, irrelevant, out of date or incomplete. We do not charge for receiving a request for access to personal information or complying with a correction request.
To access or correct your personal information, please write to:
Privacy Officer: Troy McPhee
Phone: 02 9633 3300
Address: Suite 3 Level 9, 100 George St, Parramatta NSW 2150
We do not charge for providing access to your personal information.
In some limited situations, 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?
We welcome your questions and comments about how we manage your privacy. If you have any concerns about whether we have complied with the Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Principles or this Privacy Policy, please write to our Privacy Officer Troy McPhee as detailed above. We will consider your complaint through our internal complaints resolution process and we will try to respond with a decision within 5 business days of you making the complaint.
Your consent
By asking us to assist with your financial planning needs, you consent to the collection and use of the information you have provided to us for the purposes described above.
Updating this policy
This Privacy Policy was prepared on 27th August 2020. We may update it at any time. The new version will be published on the Adviser fp website www.adviserfp.com.au/privacy/.