Privacy Policy

Synchron and Insurance Watch are committed to ensuring the confidentiality and security of the information provided by you to us. We support and embrace the National Privacy Principles set out in the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 and the protection afforded by this act for the security of private information held on ordinary Australians.

Information held by Synchron and your Adviser about you

Information held about you includes (but is not restricted to) your name, address, contact details, occupation, financial and health details. The actual amount and type of information collected and stored will depend on the nature of services we provide for you. Irrespective of what service we provide, we will not collect and hold information that is not necessary or pertinent for the professional and expeditious fulfilment of our service obligation to you. We will only collect personal information from you by lawful, reasonable and obvious means. Examples of when we will obtain information from you are:

• When we ascertain from you the facts necessary to make a fair and reasonable assessment of your insurance or financial needs and objectives ("Fact Find"),
• When you complete your application for insurance,
• When you complete your investment application,
• When you complete your superannuation membership application,
• When you complete supplementary medical or financial questionnaires.

Where reasonable and practicable, we will only collect personal information about you, from you. You have the option of not providing us with any or all personal information requested, but failure to provide us with this information may result in us not being able to provide you with complete and accurate service standards. Once we hold personal information, we will take reasonable steps to keep it accurate, complete and up to date. Where, in the course of providing a service to you, it has been necessary for us to collect your tax file number, that number will be retained on our file by your adviser and/or Synchron and will be forwarded to financial institutions as required. If you advise us that you object to your tax file number being retained, it will be permanently deleted from our files.

Security of Information

Synchron and Insurance Watch take all reasonable security measures to protect your personal information from loss, unauthorised access, destruction, misuse, modification or disclosure.

Who will have access to your private information?

Where necessary for the providing of services to you, the information you provide us with may be disclosed to persons or corporations with whom Synchron or Insurance Watch has a contractual arrangement. Such persons or corporations may include insurance companies, fund managers, doctors or health service providers. In all cases where your personal information is provided to other parties, it will only be done so for the purpose for which it was intended when provided from you to us, unless you grant your consent to the information being used for a secondary purpose.

Using your private information to communicate with you

Your personal information may be used by us to communicate to you with information about financial services in general or specific financial services. You may tell us at any time if you do not wish to receive such communication and we will cease doing so.

What happens on the sale of our Authorised Representatives business

In the event that either our Authorised Representative or we propose to sell our business, we may disclose some of your personal information to potential purchasers for the purpose of conducting due diligence investigations. Any such disclosure will be made in the strictest confidence and conditional that no personal information will be used or disclosed by them. In the event of a sale being effected, we or our Authorised Representative may transfer your personal information to the purchaser of the business. As a client you will be granted at least 14 days notice by mail to your last known mailing address that such transfer will be taking place, and have the opportunity to object to the transfer.

You have access to the information we hold

The information held by us in relation to you is available for you to view if requested upon payment of a handling fee. You will be granted access to your personal information within a reasonable time from the date a written request is received by Synchron or Insurance Watch. If, on inspection, you can show us that the information held by us is inaccurate we will take all reasonable steps to make relevant corrections. Please note that we may not provide you with access to your personal information if doing so would infringe on another person’s privacy rights, would be a breach of the law or would pose a threat to public health or safety. Where a request is frivolous we may refuse to provide you with access or may charge a higher than standard handling fee.

We take your complaints seriously

If you have any complaints about how we handle your private information, please contact us at one of the contact points shown below. We take your privacy seriously and will address your concerns through our complaints handling process. If you believe you do not receive a satisfactory resolution to your concern, you may contact the Office of the Federal Privacy Commission. The web site of the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner is http://www.privacy.gov.au

Our contact details are available at: www.insurancewatch.com.au