Our commitment to you
Thank you for visiting our website and for viewing our Privacy Policy.
We recognise the importance of protecting your privacy and the personal information in our care. We have created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy.
For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, the following businesses will be referred to collectively as “EGU”:
EGU (ABN# 87 156 834 711);
EGU Accounting and Taxation (ABN# 68 933 870 812);
EGU Financial Services (ABN# 19 626 684 366);
EGU Wealth Management (ABN# 34 339 231 736).
This Privacy Policy details how EGU manages your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Our Privacy Policy seeks to safeguard the privacy of your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles (“the APPs”). This Privacy Policy sets out the kind of information we hold and how we collect, hold, use and disclose that information (including personal information and sensitive information).
This Privacy Policy may be amended or revised at any time. The revised Policy will take effect when it is uploaded on our website. This Privacy Policy represents the latest version of the EGU Privacy Policy.
APP 1 – Open and transparent management of personal information
EGU manages personal information in an open and transparent way by complying with the Australian Privacy Principles. We will tell you what sort of personal information we hold, how we collect it, and for what purposes we use and disclose this information.
We collect personal information from you and about you as part of our advisory role. We do this in a variety of ways, including seeking personal information directly from you, and from third parties (eg a superannuation fund you invest in). Any personal information we hold about you will be securely stored either in hard copy or on computer hard drive, using computer software and/or data storage facilities provided by third parties including cloud services or other technology.
Our Privacy Policy is available on our website. We are also happy to provide you with a soft or hard copy of our Privacy Policy free of charge upon request to the Privacy Officer.
If you believe EGU has breached the Australian Privacy Principles, please contact the Privacy Officer in writing. We will respond to you within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (www.oaic.gov.au).
APP 2 – Anonymity
Where reasonably practicable, you may have the option of not identifying yourself, or of using a pseudonym, when dealing with us in relation to a particular matter. However, if you wish to receive information about our services, events, industry updates or receive advice from EGU, it may not be practical for you to use a pseudonym or otherwise not identify yourself and we may require you to provide personal information. If you do not provide some or all of the personal information requested, we may not be able to provide you with some or all of the services you request.
APP 3 – Collection of solicited personal information
EGU will collect your personal information directly from you and from third parties. We collect your personal information in order to provide you with personalised and comprehensive advice.
EGU are subject to legislative and regulatory requirements which necessitate us obtaining and holding detailed information which personally identifies you and/or contains information or an opinion about you (“personal information”). Our ability to provide you with comprehensive financial advice is also dependent on us obtaining certain personal information about you, which may include:
name and contact details;
date of birth and gender;
bank account details;
employment details, employment history, family commitments and social security eligibility;
details of your current financial circumstances, including your assets and liabilities (both actual and potential), income, expenditure, investments, insurance cover and superannuation;
details of your financial needs and objectives;
details of your investment preferences and aversion or tolerance to risk;
documentation used for identification and verification purpose;
other personal or sensitive information.
EGU may also record, monitor and store electronic records of telephone calls with you and with third parties for the following purposes:
in order to maintain electronic records of our advice and/or your instructions;
for security, training and monitoring purposes, including disputes resolution and compliance monitoring purposes.
It may be necessary in some instances for EGU to collect sensitive information about you, for example, your Tax File Number (TFN), professional memberships and health information.
EGU will only collect information that is reasonably necessary for the primary purpose of providing a professional service to you and for complying with our legal obligations. If this information is considered sensitive, then unless the law provides otherwise, EGU will also require your consent to the collection of this sensitive information. We will only collect sensitive information if it is necessary to provide our services to you.
EGU will collect personal information in a fair and lawful manner. In most instances, we will only collect personal information directly from you unless it is unreasonable and impracticable to do so.
APP 4 – Dealing with unsolicited personal information
We will not collect any personal information about you except when you have knowingly provided that information to us or authorised a third party to provide that information to us. If we receive unsolicited personal information about you, we will contact you and will destroy or de-identify the information as soon as practicable, unless it is unlawful or unreasonable to do so.
APP 5 – Notification of the collection of personal information
EGU will endeavour to only collect personal information directly from you, however, at times EGU may need to collect personal information from a third party. We will inform you when this occurs. We will also be clear about the purpose of the collection, who we might disclose this information to, whether the personal information is required under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order and the main consequences of not collecting this information.
In some circumstances, EGU uses third party service providers to carry out part of the services we provide to you. These services providers maybe located domestically or internationally.
APP 6 – Use or disclosure of personal information
EGU will not use or disclose personal information collected by us for any purpose other than the primary purpose for which it is collected, unless you would reasonably expect us to use or disclose the information for a secondary purpose, or your consent has been obtained to use the information for additional purposes. Exceptions to this include where disclosure is:
required by superannuation fund trustees, insurance providers, and product issuers for the purpose of giving effect to your financial plan and recommendations made by us;
required by law or for inspection to ensure compliance with mandatory professional standards;
reasonably necessary to assist a law enforcement agency;
external service providers for the purposes of audit, peer reviews, legal advice, consultancy, outsourced administration, issuing statements or handling mail;
required by reporting entities for the purpose of complying with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing legislation;
permitted under the Australian Privacy Principles.
Where EGU has collected the information from you, we may use this information for the purpose of direct marketing, to conduct surveys, to notify of seminars and other events, to seek your feedback and for any other business related purposes.
APP 7 – Direct marketing
EGU may use the personal information collected from you for the purpose of providing you with direct marketing material such as articles that may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive direct marketing material, please advise us by contacting us by any of the methods detailed below.
APP 8 – Cross-border disclosure of personal information
EGU may transfer or store your personal information outside Australia, if we engage with, or are required to send personal information to an overseas entity to fulfil the purpose for which the personal information was collected (or a related or ancillary purpose).
Your personal data may also be stored by third parties, via cloud services or other technology, to whom EGU has contracted with, to support EGU’s business operations. These third parties do not use or have access to your personal data other than for cloud storage and retrieval. EGU requires such parties to employ at least the same level of security that we use to protect your personal data, in line with the APPs.
If we do disclose personal information to an overseas recipient without your consent, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that this recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles or a similar applicable law in relation to that information.
APP 9 – Adoption, use or disclosure of identifiers
EGU will not adopt, use or disclose government agency identifiers, for example, TFNs, as our primary means of identifying you unless it is required or authorised by or under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order.
APP 10 – Quality of personal information
We will endeavour to ensure that, at all times, the personal information we collect, hold, use or disclose is up to date, accurate and complete. We will take reasonable steps to correct personal information. If you become aware, or believe, that any personal information we hold is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, please contact the Privacy Officer at the details provided below.
APP 11 – Security of personal information
EGU takes the security of your personal information seriously. We will, at all times, endeavour to ensure that the personal information collected and held by us is protected from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. At all times your personal information is treated as confidential and any sensitive information is treated as highly confidential.
We will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify any personal information no longer required.
APP 12 – Access to personal information
You may, at any time, request access to your personal information and EGU will (subject to the following exceptions) provide you with access to that information either by:
providing you with copies of the information requested;
allowing you to inspect the information requested; or
providing you with an accurate summary of the information held.
We will, prior to providing access in accordance with this policy, require you to provide evidence of your identity.
We will not provide you with access to your personal information if:
providing access would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of a person, or to public health or public safety; or
providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others; or
the request for access is frivolous or vexatious; or
the information related to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between us and would not be discoverable in those proceedings; or
providing access would reveal our intentions in relation to negotiations with you in such a way as to prejudice those negotiations; or
providing access would be unlawful; or
denying access is required or authorised by or under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order; or
both of the following apply:
the entity has reason to suspect that unlawful activity, or misconduct of a serious nature, that relates to the entity's functions or activities has been, is being or may be engaged in;
giving access would be likely to prejudice the taking of appropriate action in relation to the matter; or
providing access would be likely to prejudice certain operations by or on behalf of an enforcement body; or
giving access would reveal evaluative information generated within the entity in connection with a commercially sensitive decision making process.
In the event we refuse you access to your personal information, we will provide you with an explanation for that refusal and the mechanisms available to complain about our refusal.
APP 13 – Correction of personal information
We will endeavor to ensure that, at all times, the personal information we hold about you is up to date and accurate.
If EGU holds information about you for a purpose and knows that the information is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading we will take steps to correct the information. If you request us to correct the information we will take reasonable steps to do so. If a third party is relying on this information, at your request we will also notify them, unless it is impracticable or unlawful to do so.
If we refuse to make a correction, we will let you know why and the complaint mechanisms that are available to you. If we continue to use this information, you may request us to associate a statement that the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
All requests for correction to personal information should be in writing to the Privacy Officer. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period after the request is made. We will not charge you for making the request for the correction of personal information.
Privacy on our website
When you visit any part of our websites, we collect statistical data about that visit (e.g. what you looked at, the way in which you moved around the site, etc.) which is not personally identifiable. We use this information for statistical purposes and to improve our website. We generally only collect personal information from our website when it is provided voluntarily by you.
Contacting Us
All requests for access or correction to personal information, privacy complaints, queries in relation to this Privacy Policy, or any other privacy related matter, should be directed to the Privacy Officer at EGU as follows:
EGU
c/o The Privacy Officer
GPO Box 1598 Brisbane QLD 4001