Customer Credit Information Policy

Customer Credit Information Policy

Policy Version Date: November 2024

INTRODUCTION

Pure Dairy Food Services Pty Ltd (ACN 682 213 958) (Pure Dairy, we, us, our) is a credit provider within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), and the Privacy (Credit Reporting) Code 2014 contained in Part IIIa of the Privacy Act (Credit Reporting Code). Please read the following credit information management policy (Credit Policy) to understand how your credit information and credit eligibility information is collected, stored, handled, used and disclosed by us as a credit provider.

This policy explains the kinds of credit and credit eligibility information we collect and hold about you, including from credit reporting bodies, and also what we use this information for, to whom we disclose it, how to request access to or correction of it, and our complaints procedure.

From time to time we may update our Credit Policy to keep up-to-date with legal requirements and the way we run our business. We may notify you of significant changes to our Credit Policy by posting an amended version on our website at www.puredairy.com and the changes will take effect at this time. Our credit policy is available on our website  at www.puredairy.com or you can obtain a copy by contacting us. You are responsible for reviewing this Credit Policy periodically and informing yourself of any changes.

CREDIT AND RELATED INFORMATION COLLECTED AND HELD

Credit information is a type of personal information about an individual that is governed by Part IIIA of the Privacy Act. In general terms, credit information means personal information that has a bearing on credit that has been provided to you or that you have applied for, whether the credit is provided or applied for is commercial (including trade) or personal credit i.e. as an individual, a sole trader or a business and includes both credit for personal, domestic or household purposes as well as business-related credit. Credit information can include information that identifies you, about the amount(s) you have borrowed, your repayments and any defaults. It can also cover information about you as a guarantor of any credit or as an insured party under a credit related insurance policy.

Credit eligibility information, as it relates to you, is also defined in the Privacy Act and relates to credit reporting information (such as a credit report and/or credit score) disclosed to us, as a credit provider, by a credit reporting body (such as Equifax and/or credit insurance providers) (CRB), as well as any information that a CRB derives from any credit information it holds about you.

The kinds of credit and related information that we collect and hold about you, where you are a Pure Dairy customer applying for a trade credit or trade account with us, includes:

  • identification information such as your name, address(es);
  • credit contract information, such as the type of trade credit being sought, the credit amount, contract terms and contract start and end dates;
  • involvement in any court or similar proceedings about a credit contract you have or for which you have applied;
  • repayment history, default information (including in relation to payment of any amount previously reported as being in default), credit history and eligibility, credit worthiness and financial hardship information (if and where applicable);
  • information regarding new arrangements with us or another credit provider in relation to a missed or delayed repayment;
  • any proposed or actual insolvency agreement registered in your (or your business’) name in the National Personal Insolvency Index (or equivalent);
  • serious credit infringements or any instances of attempted or actual fraud committed in relation to a credit application or agreement;
  • information regarding an opinion of another credit provider about you or someone else related to your trade credit application; and
  • information that we obtain from CRBs such as credit reports, credit scores assigned by a CRB regarding your creditworthiness (such as internal credit scores, assessments, summaries or evaluations),as well as any information we derive from this information;
  • any alerts from a CRB about any of your accounts that may pose a significant risk of default, as well as any information we derive from this information; and
  • any other information relating to any risk on repayment of trade credit.

We may collect credit information directly from you when you submit an application with us for trade credit. Where it is reasonable and practicable to do so, we will only collect credit information about you from you directly and not from third parties.

However, to assess a trade credit application, we may also collect credit information and credit eligibility information about you from a CRB (such as Coface, Equifax and Illion) or another credit provider. In limited circumstances, we may also collect credit information about you from publicly available sources (such as the Internet) and from third parties such as from your credit referees (if any).

Whilst we will always maintain robust privacy practices, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties, including CRBs or other credit providers, and you should review their relevant privacy policy to satisfy yourself as to how they protect and handle your information.

PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE COLLECT, HOLD, USE AND DISCLOSE CREDIT AND RELATED INFORMATION

Pure Dairy collects, holds, uses and/or discloses your credit and credit eligibility information for purposes including:

  • verification of your identity;
  • to assess your application for commercial credit, or to enable us to collect any overdue payments for commercial credit, but only where (in the case of an application for commercial credit) you have consented to the disclosure of your consumer credit report for that purpose;
  • to assess whether to accept you as a guarantor in relation to commercial credit where you have consented to the disclosure of your consumer credit for that purpose;
  • to assess whether to approve your application for a credit account;
  • to communicate with you, and to assess any issues or complaints that we or you may have regarding our credit relationship;
  • to provide you with credit (if you application is approved);
  • to assist us in assessing any hardship applications you make;
  • to request information from a CRB to undertake pre-screening of a list of individuals using and meeting the eligibility criteria nominated by us for the purposes of marketing and promotions of our products and services;
  • compliance with our obligations to report to a CRB (including disclosing information such as the date you took out your credit and closing date, your credit limit, the type of trade credit or other loan, any joint applicants, your repayment amount and frequency, any repayments you have missed, any overdue repayments that you have brought up to date, defaults on your credit that are $100 or more and at least 60 days overdue where we’ve issued you with a written notice asking you to pay us, financial hardship information, payment arrangements or other arrangements you have agreed with us such as a personal insolvency agreement, serious credit infringements, as well as any updates to any of these);
  • to determine the infringement, where we have received from any CRB information that suggests that you have committed a serious credit infringement, prevent, detect and investigate suspicious, fraudulent, criminal or other activity that may cause you, us or others harm, including in relation to our products and services;
  • to comply with our obligations under Australian law, including under the Privacy Act and the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth); and
  • to contact you regarding any of the above, including via electronic messaging such as SMS and email, by mail, by phone or in any other lawful manner.

DISCLOSURE TO AND BY CREDIT REPORTING BODIES

Generally, we derive the following information from credit information (and information a CRB derives from the credit information they hold about you) that is disclosed to us by a CRB in accordance with applicable laws:

  • whether you can afford to repay the money we lend you;
  • the amount of money we should lend you;
  • the chances that you will not repay us;
  • the chances of recovering any amount you owe us;
  • whether we should approve your credit account application;
  • whether you’re eligible for a financial hardship variation to your trade credit application or further financial hardship variation;
  • the plausibility of your occupation, income, expenditure and net asset position and other financial information in your trade credit application; and/or
  • whether we should lend you money

If we cannot collect credit information about you or if you use a pseudonym, we will not be able to assess your credit account application or provide the assistance you require. For example, we will not be able to process your application if you do not provide the credit amount you are seeking.

Pure Dairy disclose your credit information to the following CRBs:

A CRB may use the information we disclose to assess your credit worthiness and may include this information in reports that are then provided to other licensed credit providers, debt collection agencies and/or other third parties for the purpose of those providers assessing your credit worthiness, including in relation to consumer credit.

Our sharing of information about your missed payments and defaults with CRBs may impact your credit worthiness and your ability to obtain credit in the future. We will only do this as authorised by law including if you miss a payment in your credit agreement, where you have defaulted on your credit agreement, or where you make a serious credit infringement. We may also disclose this information as well as a copy of your credit report and your credit application to the relevant guarantor for your credit. We will also provide updates to CRBs on any payments we receive after we disclose missed payments and defaults.

The CRB’s identified above also offer a service to credit providers wishing to send direct marketing material about credit services to individuals. This is called “credit pre-screening”. You have the right to request that the CRB’s do not use your personal information for this purpose. To opt out of credit pre-screening, contact the relevant CRB, using the contact details on their websites noted above.

Pre-screening opt out

Please note that you can contact CRBs directly to request that they do not use credit reporting information about you for the purpose of pre-screening of direct marketing by a credit provider, or that they do not use or disclose credit reporting information about you if you believe on reasonable grounds that you have been or are likely to be a victim of fraud. ASIC’s Money Smart website also contains useful information on credit reporting. You can also find out more about credit reports at the CreditSmart website.

DISCLOSURE GENERALLY

We may disclose your credit information and credit eligibility information to third parties in certain situations in connection with the purposes described above.

This may include disclosing your credit information and credit eligibility information to the following types of third parties:

  • our related companies;
  • CRBs (such as those listed above);
  • any potential third party acquirer of our business or assets, and advisors to that third party;
  • our professional advisers (such as lawyers, accountants or auditors) and (solely, mortgage or trade) insurers;
  • third parties to whom you have authorised us to disclose your information (e.g. referees or account nominees); and/or
  • any other person as required or permitted by law.

If we disclose your credit information or credit eligibility information to third parties we will use reasonable commercial efforts to ensure that such third parties only use your credit information or credit eligibility information as reasonably required for the purpose of disclosure and in a manner consistent with applicable laws, for example (where commercially practical) by including suitable privacy and confidentiality clauses in our agreement with any authorised party to which we disclose your credit information or credit eligibility information. For the avoidance of all doubt, we will never disclose your credit report to any landlord, employer, real estate agent or insurance company (other than as identified above).

We do not disclose credit information or credit eligibility information to entities that do not have an Australian link. However, in limited circumstances we make such disclosures to our related companies and third party service providers for the purposes described above and in line accordance with our Privacy Policy .

SECURITY AND RETENTION

We implement reasonable measures to protect and safeguard your credit information and credit eligibility information from misuse, interference and loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We maintain physical security over paper and electronic data stores, such as through locks and security systems at our premises. We also maintain computer and network security, for example, we use firewalls (security measures for the internet) and other security systems such as user identifiers and passwords to control access to our computer systems.

Generally, we will retain your credit information and credit eligibility information for the period necessary for the purposes for which your credit information and credit eligibility information was collected (as outlined in this Credit Policy) unless a longer retention period is required by law or if it is reasonably necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations, resolve a dispute.

ACCESS

In order to ensure you have access to the most up-to-date credit and related information about you, you should consider requesting access to the information which CRBs hold about you.

Generally, you are also entitled to access any credit information or credit eligibility information which we hold about you. You can do this by contacting us on the details below. You will need to provide evidence to confirm your identity before we can provide access. We will endeavour to respond to all requests for access within 30 days of the request. Please note that we may need to charge you our reasonable costs of providing you with access.

We may, however, refuse a request for access where providing access would be unlawful, where we are required or authorised to do so by or under an Australian law or court/ tribunal order, or where giving access would be likely to prejudice enforcement related activities by or on behalf of an enforcement body. If we refuse your request, we will notify you in writing of our reasons (unless it would be unreasonable to do so) and explain how you can take the matter further.

CORRECTIONS

You are also able to request corrections to any credit information and credit eligibility information which we hold about you by contacting us on the details below. You will need to provide evidence to confirm your identity before we can make any corrections.

If we are satisfied that the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, we will take reasonable steps to correct the information within 30 days of your request, or another period we agree with you in writing. If we do not agree the information needs to be corrected, you may request that we hold a record of your correction request with the relevant information. If we correct your information, we will confirm this in writing.

We have obligations to take reasonable steps to correct information independently of any request from you, where we are satisfied that, having regard to the purpose for which it is held, the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, misleading or irrelevant.

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you are concerned that we may not have acted in accordance with our obligations as a credit provider under the Privacy Act or the Credit Reporting Code, or if you would like to request access to or correction of the credit information or credit eligibility information we hold about you, please contact us on the details below. You will need to specify the nature of your complaint in writing. We will, within 7 days, acknowledge your complaint in writing and explain how we will deal with and investigate it. Depending on the nature of your complaint and the information to which it relates, we may need to consult with and/or notify CRBs or other credit providers.

We will make a decision about your complaint following our investigation and will advise of this in writing within 30 days or such longer period as we agree with you in writing.

Chief Financial Officer
Pure Dairy Food Services Pty Ltd
Level 1, 666 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster, Victoria 3108
accounts@puredairy.com

If you are not satisfied with our decision, you can take your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
Phone: 1300 363 992
Online: www.oaic.gov.au
Email:    enquiries@oaic.gov.au

In some cases, you may also have a right to complain to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority if you are not satisfied with our response to your credit complaint, who can be contacted at:

Australian Financial Complaints Authority
GPO Box 3, Melbourne, VIC 3001
Phone: 1800 931 678 (free call within Australia: 9:00am–5:00pm AEST/AEDT weekdays)
Online: www.afca.org.au
Email:    info@afca.org.au