Our commitment to protect your privacy

We understand how important it is to protect your personal information. This document sets out our privacy policy commitment in respect of personal information we hold about you and what we do with that information.

We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purposes we have collected it or as allowed under the law. It is important to us that you are confident that any personal information we hold about you will be treated in a way which ensures protection of your personal information.

Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) for the protection of personal information, as set out in the Privacy Act and any other relevant law. You can obtain information about the APPs and your privacy rights at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner Website

Personal information

When we refer to personal information, we mean information from which your identity is reasonably apparent. This information may include information or an opinion about you. The personal information we hold about you may also include financial information or credit information.

The kinds of personal information we may collect about you include your name, date of birth, address, account details, occupation, copies of driver’s licence and/or passport, and any other information we made need to identify you. If you are applying for finance, we may also collect the ages and number of your dependants and cohabitants, the length of time at your current address, your employment details and proof of earnings and expenses.

Credit information is information which is used to assess your eligibility to be provided with finance and may include any finance that you have outstanding, your repayment history in respect of those loans, and any defaults, details of your assets and liabilities, and details of your income and commitments. Usually, credit information is exchanged between credit and finance providers and credit reporting bodies.

Financial Information includes all the areas listed above for Credit Information, and also details of investments, superannuation, insurances and estate planning documents.

Health Information If you apply for any insurance product through us we may also collect your health information. We will only collect health information from you with your consent.

Why we collect your personal information

We collect personal information for a variety of purposes, including:

  • to comply with legislation;
  • providing financial planning advice to you;
  • assessing your application for finance and managing that finance application with banks and other financial institutions on your behalf;
  • preparing your income tax returns;
  • preparing your business activity statements;
  • assisting you apply for superannuation, insurance or investment products;
  • maintaining your investment portfolio records; and
  • assisting you brief your solicitor in respect of estate planning needs.

We may also collect your personal information for the purposes of direct marketing and managing our relationship with you. From time to time we may offer you other products and services.

How do we collect your personal information?

Where reasonable and practical we will collect your personal information directly from you. We may also collect your personal information from other people with your consent, or from publicly available records.

Do we disclose your personal information?

We may disclose your personal information to the following persons or entities:

  • The Australian Taxation Office;
  • Where we are authorised or required to do so by law, such as under the Anti-Money or Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth);
  • Any person or organisation as required under Court Order;
  • CPA Australia, the Financial Planning Association, the Self-Managed Superannuation Professionals Association, Australian Securities & Investments Commission, on request for their inspection to ensure ongoing compliance with mandatory professional standards and legal obligations;
  • Interprac Financial Planning Pty Ltd and the Professional Lenders Association of Australia (or such other entity we are members or representatives of from time to time);
  • superannuation fund trustees, insurance providers and product issuers for the purpose of giving effect to your financial plan and the recommendations made by us;
  • Lenders in respect of finance applications on your behalf;
  • Software suppliers in respect of software we use to deliver our services to you;
  • administrative service providers in respect of your investments to assist them in reporting, providing distributions, and other administrative tasks relating to your investments;
  • to any other person or organisation where you have provided your written or verbal consent; and
  • in circumstances otherwise authorised by the APPs.

Prior to disclosing any of your personal information to another person or organisation, we will take all reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that:

  1. The person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to our commitment, or
  2. You have consented to us making the disclosure.

We may use cloud storage to store the personal information we hold about you. The cloud storage and the IT servers may be located outside Australia.

We may disclose your personal information to overseas entities that provide support functions to us. You may obtain more information about these entities by contacting us.

Direct marketing

From time to time we may use your personal information to provide you with current information about finance, offers you may find of interest, changes to our organisation, or new products or services being offered by us or any company with whom we are associated.

If you do not wish to receive marketing information, you may at any time decline to receive such information by telephoning us on 02 4934 8844 or by writing to us at PO Box 16, Karuah NSW 2324. If the direct marketing is by email you may also use the unsubscribe function. We will not charge you for giving effect to your request and will take all reasonable steps to meet your request at the earliest possible opportunity.

Updating your personal information

It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. During our relationship with you we ask you to keep us informed of any changes in your personal information.

If you wish to make any changes to your personal information, you may contact us. We will generally rely on you to ensure the information we hold about you is accurate or complete.

Access and correction to your personal information

We will provide you with access to the personal information we hold about you. You may request access to any of the personal information we hold about you at any time.

We may charge a fee for our costs of retrieving and supplying the information to you.

Depending on the type of request that you make we may respond to your request immediately, otherwise we usually respond to you within seven days of receiving your request. We may need to contact other entities to properly investigate your request.

There may be situations where we are not required to provide you with access to your personal information, for example, if the information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, or if your request is vexatious.

An explanation will be provided to you if we deny you access to the personal information we hold about you.

If any of the personal information we hold about you is incorrect, inaccurate or out of date you may request that we correct the information. If appropriate we will correct the personal information at the time of the request otherwise, we will provide an initial response to you within seven days of receiving your request. Where reasonable, and after our investigation, we will provide you with details about whether we have corrected the personal information within 30 days.

We may need to consult with other entities as part of our investigation.

If we refuse to correct personal information, we will provide you with our reasons for not correcting the information.

Using government identifiers

If we collect government identifiers, such as your tax file number, we do not use or disclose this information other than authorised or required by law. We will never use a government identifier in order to identify you.

Business without identifying you

In most circumstances it will be necessary for us to identify you in order to successfully do business with you, however, where it is lawful and practicable to do so, we will offer you the opportunity of doing business with us without providing us with personal information, for example, if you make general inquiries about interest rates or current promotional offers.

Sensitive information

We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent. Sensitive information is personal information that includes information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political persuasion, memberships in trade or professional associations or trade unions, sexual preferences, criminal record, or health.

How safe and secure is your personal information that we hold?

We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment. We may store your personal information in paper and electronic form. We will also take reasonable steps to protect any personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We always treat your personal information as confidential and any sensitive information as highly confidential.

Access to our premises is controlled by allowing only authorised personnel to access the premises.

All electronically held information is protected using access passwords on each computer and firewalls are in place. Data is backed up each evening and stored securely off site.

Complaints

If you are dissatisfied with how we have dealt with your personal information, or you have a complaint about our compliance with the Privacy Act, you may contact our complaints officer on 02 4934 8844.

We will acknowledge your complaint within seven days. We will provide you with a decision on your complaint within 30 days.

If you are dissatisfied with the response of our complaints officer you may make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner which can be contacted via the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website or on 1300 363 992.

Financial Planning Services

Excel Financial Advisors Pty Ltd provides financial planning services as Corporate Authorised Representative of Interprac Financial Planning Pty Ltd AFSL 246638 (InterPrac).

In addition to complying with our own Privacy Policy, we must also comply with InterPrac’s Privacy Policy which is contained in our Financial Services Guide. Please Click Here to download a copy.

PLAN Australia Aggregation Services

We receive services to support the broking services we give you. We receive mortgage aggregation services from PLAN Australia Aggregation Services. Sometimes they collect personal information about customers to manage customer enquiries or complaints, commission payments or file reviews.

If you want to find out how they manage your personal information, please Click Here.

Your visit on our website

Our website address is: www.exceladvisors.com.au

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Further information

You may request further information about the way we manage your personal information by contacting us.

Change in our privacy policy

We regularly review all our policies and attempt to keep up to date with market expectations. Technology is constantly changing, as is the law and marketplace practices. As a consequence we may change this privacy policy from time to time or as the need arises.

This Privacy Policy came into existence on 18 March 2018.
Last updated 5th April 2022.