Our Credit Information Policy

This is personal information that has a bearing on credit and has been provided to you or your associated entity, or that you or your associated entity have applied for.

As a credit provider, we may collect credit-related personal information about you in certain circumstances where you are associated with a third party that has been provided with commercial credit by us, or that is applying for commercial credit with us. This includes commercial credit in connection with a business, where you are associated with that business, for example as a director, and covers information about you as a guarantor, or proposed guarantor, of a commercial credit facility. This may involve us conducting a credit check on you as an individual.

We will only collect, use or disclose credit-related information as permitted by law and in accordance with our policies, including this policy.

Credit-related information that we collect and hold may include: 

• identification information such as your name(s), date of birth, contact details (personal and/or business), address, drivers’ license and passport details, telephone and fax numbers and email address
• repayment and default history
• details about your solvency and current and previous credit arrangements, guarantee arrangements, credit enquiries and applications
• details about adverse court proceedings and judgments, personal insolvencies and other publicly available information in relation to your creditworthiness
• credit reporting information about you in the form of a credit report received from a credit reporting body
• information derived by credit reporting bodies or by us, including from the information set out above (including credit scores, ratings and assessments relating to your creditworthiness). 

In addition to collecting personal information about you in accordance with our Privacy Policy, we may collect, hold, use and disclose certain credit-related information about you. We may obtain this information from you, your advisers or authorised representatives or from third parties, including from an application for credit, credit reporting bodies, other credit providers, information service providers or from public sources, in order to assist us in determining whether we will provide, or continue to provide, any commercial credit to you or your associated entity.

If you, or your associated entity, ask us for credit, or you propose to provide a guarantee in relation to credit, we may check your credit reports. We might collect information about you from, and give it to, credit reporting bodies as permitted by law. We may share your credit-related information with them so they can provide credit reports to others. We currently deal with the following credit reporting body:

Equifax Pty Ltd
PO Box 964, North Sydney NSW 2059
Telephone: 138 332 or 1300 762 207
Website: www.equifax.com.au or www.mycreditfile.com.au 

You can request a copy of Equifax’s credit reporting policy from its website or by contacting them directly using the details set out above.

We may use this information to derive or calculate a credit assessment score in relation to you, which will then help us in conducting our assessment of your creditworthiness.
We may also use the credit-related information that is collected and held by us to help us decide whether to provide commercial credit to your associated entity.
We may use or disclose your credit-related information to:

• assess your application for commercial credit or an application for commercial credit by your associated entity
• collect overdue payments owed to us in respect of commercial credit
• assess your suitability as a guarantor in relation to an application for commercial credit by your associated entity
• manage our relationship with you, including administering and managing commercial credit that we have provided to you, or your associated entity
• work with our service providers
• create assessments and ratings of your creditworthiness in relation to commercial credit provided to or applied for by you or your associated entity, or in relation to commercial credit guaranteed or proposed to be guaranteed by you
• disclose to the credit reporting body that we deal with (Equifax, whose details are set out above). A credit reporting body collects different types of credit-related information about individuals and uses that information to provide a credit-related service to their customers (including to us). Information may be given to a credit reporting body before, during or after the provision of credit and is limited to credit-related information we collect. We may provide information to a credit reporting body for each review of your facility and we may obtain a credit report from a credit reporting body for the purpose of such review
• disclose it to other third parties that provide services to us (or to you on our behalf), such as professional advisers, contractors, agents and other third parties that process applications for credit that have been made to us
• disclose it, with your consent, to other credit providers which provide, or are considering providing, credit to you (or to your associated entity) or for other purposes permitted by law
• assess and respond to any access or correction requests that you make to us
• respond to a consultation request by a credit reporting body or another credit provider about an access or correction request that you have made to those entities
• deal with your complaints and enquiries, including responding to those complaints and enquiries and seeking legal or other professional advice in relation to those complaints and enquiries.

We may also use or disclose your credit-related information:

• as required or authorised by law or the order of a court or tribunal
• where you have consented to the use or disclosure.

The above referenced third-party entities may in turn disclose your credit-related information to any other entities as described in their privacy policies, credit information policies, or equivalent statements.

Where required by law, we will make a written note, which may be kept in electronic form, of any use or disclosure that we may make relating to your credit-related information and if:

• you (or your associated entity) make an application for credit to us
• you offer to guarantee credit that we propose to provide to your associated entity and we subsequently refuse the application or offer based on information provided to us by a credit reporting body about you, we will inform you of this and provide you with the name and contact details of that body and any other information required by law to be provided to you.

You have the right to request credit reporting bodies (including Equifax, whose details are set out above) not to:

• use your credit-related information to pre-screen your eligibility to receive direct marketing from credit providers
• use or disclose your credit-related information for a period, if you believe on reasonable grounds that you have been, or are likely to be, a victim of fraud.

The security of your credit-related information is important to us, and we take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We hold credit-related information in different forms securely in the manner detailed in our Privacy Policy.

In any circumstance where we intend to disclose credit-related information to overseas recipients, we will comply with applicable law and practices relating to overseas disclosure detailed in our Privacy Policy.

When your credit-related information is no longer required, we may destroy or delete it (if permitted by law to do so) in the manner detailed in our Privacy Policy.

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the credit-related information that we collect, use, hold and disclose about you is accurate, complete and up-to-date and (in relation to the purpose of our use or disclosure) is relevant to that purpose.

You have a right to request access to, and seek correction of, any credit-related information that we hold about you. If you would like to make an access or correction request, please contact us using the contact details below. There is no cost involved.

If you make an access request for any credit-related information we hold about you, we will provide you with access to this information (unless there is a legal reason not to do so) in a clear and accessible manner within a reasonable period (generally within 30 days). If we decide not to provide you with access to your information, we will provide a reason for this decision.

If you make a correction request of any credit-related information that we hold about you, we will help you correct the credit-related information within 30 days. If we cannot make a correction in that timeframe, we will ask you for extra time. We may be required to consult with other credit providers or credit reporting bodies that are permitted by law to assist us in resolving your correction request.

If we do not agree that your credit-related information is inaccurate, out-of-date or incomplete, we will provide you with a written notice including the reasons why we do not agree with you. If your request to correct your credit-related information is denied, you also have the right to ask us to make a note of your requested correction with the information.

If we have any other reasons for suspecting that credit-related information that we hold about you has become inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, we may independently decide to correct this information without consulting you. If we do this, we will take reasonable steps to notify that correction to you and to any other entities to which we have previously disclosed that credit-related information (unless it is impracticable for us to do so).

If you have a complaint regarding our failure to provide access to or to correct any credit-related information that we hold about you, you may lodge it with us or directly to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). You are not required to let us first assist you with your complaint, however, the OAIC might refer the complaint to us for resolution before they assist you. Further information about making a privacy complaint to the OAIC is at: http://www.oaic.gov.au/.

You have the right to make a complaint if you have a concern about your privacy, including that of your credit-related information. If you wish to make a complaint regarding our handling of your credit-related information (but it is not a complaint relating to access or correction, as described above), please contact us using the contact details below and provide us with details of the incident so that we can investigate your complaint. Please note that we will ask you to lodge your complaint in writing. For complaints made directly to us, we will endeavour to understand and resolve your complaint as soon as possible, in accordance with our Complaints Policy and you can expect us to acknowledge receipt of the complaint within seven days. If we cannot resolve the matter within 30 days, we will contact you and explain the reason for the delay, the expected timeframe to resolve the complaint and seek your agreement to extend the period.

If your complaint relates to the correction of your credit-related information and the resolution of your complaint requires us to correct your information, we will inform each other credit provider and credit reporting body that we have previously disclosed your information to, that you have made a correction complaint in relation to that information and that we have corrected your information because of the outcome of that complaint. However, we will not give such notification if doing so is impracticable or prohibited under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint or our proposed resolution, you have a right to lodge a further complaint to the OAIC (contact details are listed above).

This policy is subject to regular review.  Any changes to it will be notified publicly by us posting an updated version on our website, and the changes will be effective from that date. 

Any information we hold will be governed by the most current Credit Information Policy and Privacy Policy where applicable.

This policy was last updated in February 2023.  

If you wish to contact us regarding our handling of your personal information or any of the matters covered in this policy, you can contact our Privacy Officer  by:
• Post: Attention: Privacy Officer, Export Finance Australia, Level 10, 22 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000 
• Phone: +61 (0)2 8273 5333 
• Email: privacy@exportfinance.gov.au