Privacy Policy

When you trust us with your personal information, you expect us to protect it and keep it safe.

Protecting clients' privacy is very important to us. To ensure our compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Privacy Act) and as part of our commitment to ensuring the safety of our clients' private and confidential information, we have established and implemented this Privacy Policy (the Policy).

The Privacy Act requires that we handle your personal information in accordance with a set of national principles, known as the Australian Privacy Principles, which regulate the collection, use, correction, disclosure and transfer of personal information about individuals by organisations in the financial industry.

If you would like more information about how we protect your privacy, please contact us.

About this policy

The Policy explains our policies and practices with respect to the collection, use and management of your personal information and our approach to the Australian Privacy Principles.

What is personal information?

Personal information includes any information or opinion, about an identified individual or an individual who can be reasonably identified from their information. The information or opinion will still be personal information whether it is true or not and regardless of whether we have kept a record of it.

The information that we seek to collect about you will depend on the products or services that we provide. If you do not allow us to collect all of the information we request, we may not be able to deliver all of those services effectively.

What kinds of personal information do we collect and hold?

We will collect and hold your personal information for the purpose of providing financial advice services to you.

The type of information collected from you includes information that is necessary for us to provide advice to you. This could include your name, address, contact details and date of birth. We may also collect your tax file number if we are authorised to collect it and if you choose to supply it. If you apply for insurance, we may collect information about what is being insured, the beneficiaries, and your health and financial situation, depending on the type of insurance.

Throughout the life of your product or service, we may collect and hold additional personal information about you. This could include transaction information or making a record of queries or complaints you make and, if you make an insurance claim, collecting additional information to assess the claim.

The collection of sensitive information is restricted by the Privacy Act. This includes information about your religion, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, criminal record, and sexual orientation. It also includes health information and biometric information.

Generally, we only collect this sort of information if it is necessary to provide you with a specific product or service and you have consented to that collection. For example, we may collect health information about you to process a claim under an insurance policy or collect voice biometric information to verify your identity or authorise transactions.

For what purposes do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?

The main reason we collect, use, hold and disclose personal information is to provide you with products and services. This includes:

checking whether you are eligible for the product or service;
assisting you where online applications are not completed;
providing the product or service; and
helping manage the product or service.

We may also use your information to comply with legislative or regulatory requirements in any jurisdiction, prevent fraud, crime or other activity that may cause harm in relation to our products or services and to help us run our business. We may also use your information to tell you about products or services we think may interest you.

How do we collect personal information?

We collect most personal information directly from you where this is reasonable and practical. We gather this information either through application or other forms you complete (commonly referred to as "fact finding" documents) or by recording the information you provide via phone calls, interviews and other forms of communication.

We also collect information from you electronically. For instance, when you visit our website or if you send us electronic correspondence (see "Do we collect personal information electronically?").

In addition to the above, we may also collect information from you from external sources. For instance, we may collect personal information about you from:

publicly available sources of information, such as public registers;
your representatives (including your legal adviser, mortgage broker, executor, administrator, guardian, trustee, or attorney);
your employer;
other organisations, who jointly with us, provide products or services to you;
commercial information service providers, such as companies that provide fraud prevention reports; and
insurers, re-insurers and health care providers.

What laws require or authorise us to collect personal information?

We are required or authorised to collect:

certain identification information about you by the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) and Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules Instrument 2007 (No. 1);
your Tax File Number, if you choose to provide it, by the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth); and
certain information in relation to your application if you have applied for an insurance as required by the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth).

How do we hold personal information?

Much of the information we hold about you will be stored electronically in secure data centres which are located in the Ayr and Townsville Grasso Financial Services' premises and owned by either Grasso Financial Services or external service providers. Some information we hold about you will be stored in paper files. We use a range of physical and electronic security measures to protect the security of the personal information we hold. For example:

access to information systems is controlled through identity and access management;
employees are bound by internal information security policies and are required to keep information secure;
all employees are required to complete training about information security; and
we regularly monitor and review our compliance with internal policies and industry best practice.

We take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify any personal information after it can no longer be used.

Who do we disclose your personal information to, and why?

We may provide personal information about our clients to organisations outside Grasso Financial Services. To protect personal information, we enter into contracts with our service providers that require them to comply with the Privacy Act. These contracts oblige them to only use the personal information we disclose to them for the specific role we ask them to perform.

Generally, we disclose personal information to organisations that help us with our business. These may include:

our agents, contractors and external service providers (for example, mailing houses and technology service providers);
paraplanning service providers;
insurers, re-insurers and health care providers;
payment systems operators (for example, merchants receiving card payments);
other organisations, who jointly with us, provide products or services to you;
financial services organisations, including banks, superannuation funds, stockbrokers, custodians, fund managers and portfolio service providers;
debt collectors;
our, legal advisers or auditors;
your representatives (including your legal adviser, accountant, mortgage broker, , executor, administrator, guardian, trustee, or attorney);
fraud bureaus or other organisations to identify, investigate or prevent fraud or other misconduct;
IT Service Providers;
Our Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL), JGTS Advice Pty Ltd;
external dispute resolution schemes; and
regulatory bodies, government agencies and law enforcement bodies in any jurisdiction.

There are also situations where we may also disclose your personal information where it is:

required by law or where we have a public duty to do so (such as to the Australian Taxation Office or pursuant to a court order)
authorised by law (such as where we are obliged to disclose information in the public interest or to protect our interests)
necessary in discharging obligations (such as to foreign governments for the purposes of foreign taxation)
you may have expressly consented to the disclosure or the consent may be reasonably inferred from the circumstances; or
we are otherwise permitted to disclose the information under the Privacy Act.

Do we disclose personal information overseas?

We may disclose your personal information to a recipient which is located outside Australia. This includes:

Any financial institution which you hold an account with overseas where you have given us permission to make enquiries on your behalf
Service providers who we have engaged to assist with our services.

We will not send personal information to recipients outside of Australia unless:

we have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient does not breach the Act, the APPs and the Credit Reporting Privacy Code; or
the recipient is subject to an information privacy scheme similar to the Privacy Act.

Any overseas disclosure does not affect our commitment to safeguarding personal information we collect and we will take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients comply with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Do we use or disclose personal information for marketing?

We will use your personal information to offer you products and services we believe may interest you, but we will not do so if you tell us not to. We may offer you products and services by various means, including by mail, telephone, email, SMS or other electronic means, such as through social media or targeted advertising through Grasso Financial Services websites.

We may also disclose your personal information to companies outside Grasso Financial Services who assist us to market our products and services to you.

If you don't want to receive marketing offers from us please contact us.

Do we collect personal information electronically?

We will collect information from you electronically, for instance through internet browsing, mobile or tablet applications.

Each time you visit our website, we collect information about your use of the website, which may include the following:
The date and time of visits;
Which pages are viewed;
How users navigate through the site and interact with pages (including fields completed in forms and applications completed);
Location information about users;
Information about the device used to visit our website; and
IP addresses.

We use technology called cookies when you visit our site. Cookies are small pieces of information stored on your hard drive or in memory. They can record information about your visit to the site, allowing it to remember you the next time you visit and provide a more meaningful experience.

One of the reasons for using cookies is to offer you increased security. The cookies we send to your computer cannot read your hard drive, obtain any information from your browser or command your computer to perform any action. They are designed so that they cannot be sent to another site, or be retrieved by any non-Grasso Financial Services site.

We won't ask you to supply personal information publicly over facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform that we use. Sometimes we may invite you to send your details to us via private messaging, for example, to answer a question. You may also be invited to share your personal information through secure channels to participate in other activities, such as competitions.

Access to and correction of personal information

You may request access to the personal information we hold about you. Before providing the requested information we will give you an estimate of any potential costs associated with this, including expenses for locating, retrieving, reviewing and copying any of the material you need. We may charge a reasonable fee to cover these costs.

You may also ask for corrections to be made. There is no fee for requesting that your personal information is corrected or for us to make corrections. To do so, please contact us.

There may be circumstances where we are unable to give you access to the information that you have requested. If this is the case we will inform you and explain the reasons why

You have a right to ask us to correct any information we hold about you if you believe it is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, irrelevant or is misleading. If we do not agree with the corrections you have supplied and refuse to correct the personal information, we are required to give you a written notice to that effect and a statement if requested. Where we do not allow access, we will provide you with a reason (unless unlawful to do so) in writing, along with details of how you may make a complaint in relation to the refusal.

Resolving your privacy concerns and complaints your rights

We take privacy-related complaints very seriously and consider all complaints carefully as part of our commitment to being open, honest and fair in dealing with your concerns. You can let us know of any concerns you might have in relation to privacy by contacting our office.

Contact us

PO Box 1425, Ayr, Qld 4807
Phone: Ayr office 07 4783 1767 or Townsville office on 07 4779 2079
Email: info@jgtsadvice
Website: grassofinancialservices.com.au

Our Compliance Manager will respond to your complaint within 5 days of its receipt.

We aim to resolve complaints as quickly as possible. We strive to resolve complaints within five business days but some complaints take longer to resolve. Should your complaint take longer, we will let you know what is happening and a date by which you can reasonably expect a response.

In the event the Compliance Manager is unable to resolve your complaint, you may lodge a complaint to the following authorities:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner(OAIC): Under the Privacy Act you may complain to the OAIC about the way we handle your personal information.

GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Phone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Website: www.oaic.gov.au

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA): can consider most privacy complaints involving providers of financial services.

GPO Box 3, Melbourne VIC 3001
Phone: 1800 931 678
Website: www.afca.org.au

Changes to the Privacy Policy

We may change the way we handle personal information from time to time for any reason. If we do so, we will update this Privacy Policy. An up-to-date version is available on www.grassofinancialservices.com.au or by calling us on either 07 4783 1767 or 07 4779 2079.

Meaning of words

We, us or our means:

Grasso Financial Services, ABN 12 193 904 780
JGTS Advice PTy Ltd as Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL 515921) (ABN 48 009 189 495)