What sort of personal information do we collect when you apply for credit?

Usually, we collect information such as your name, date of birth and evidence of identity, as well as information about your financial position and your current credit history.

What happens if you do not provide us with information?

If you do not provide us with personal information, we may not be able to provide you with the products and services you are seeking.

What also happens when you apply for credit?

When you apply for credit, then, under the responsible lending obligations in the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, credit providers need to see your credit history and present position in order to assist them in meeting their obligations.

Consequently, we may obtain a credit report about you from a credit reporting body when you apply for credit with us.

What is in a credit report?

A credit report contains information about your credit history. This helps us assess your credit worthiness, credit applications, verify your identity and manage the loan accounts and credit facilities you have with us.

Credit reporting bodies use credit information about individuals to prepare credit reports which may then be made available to credit providers to assist them in assessing individuals’ credit worthiness.

What information can we exchange with credit reporting bodies?

The information we exchange includes your identification details, what type of loans you have, how much you’ve borrowed, whether or not you’ve met your scheduled payment obligations and if you have committed a serious credit infringement.

We will ask the credit reporting body to provide us with an overall assessment score of your creditworthiness.

The credit reporting bodies we use are:

• Equifax Australia Information Services and Solutions Pty Ltd (Equifax Australia)
• Experian Australia Credit Services Pty Ltd (Experian Australia)
• illion Australia Pty Ltd (illion)

You can download copies of these organisations’ privacy policies as follows:

• Equifax Australia – at equifax.com.au
• Experian Australia – at experian.com.au
• illion – at illion.com.au

Comprehensive credit reporting

We can pass to a credit reporting body or bodies (the ones we use are Equifax Australia, Experian Australia or illion or all of them) details of your credit information and history – including credit you have applied for, the amounts you have borrowed, whether or not payments have been made on time and whether you have committed a serious credit infringement.

Pre-screening and restricting disclosure in cases of fraud

Credit providers may ask credit reporting bodies to use their credit-related information to pre-screen you for direct marketing.
You can ask a credit reporting body not to do this.

Also, if you’ve been, or have reason to believe that you have been, are, or likely to become, a victim of fraud (including identity fraud), you can ask the credit reporting body not to use or disclose the credit-related information it holds about you.

To whom do we disclose personal information?

The types of people and entities we disclose personal information about you to include:

• people and entities with whom we have outsourcing or service arrangements, including statement production and delivery, card production, identity confirmation and verification, loan origination, verifying loan applications, auto credit decisioning, payment processing and systems, banking services, data and transaction processing, information technology support, document storage, legal and accounting services
• organisations which provide or confirm information to verify your identity
• lenders’ mortgage insurers and valuers
• contractors for statement production and delivery and card production
• brokers, agents and advisers acting for you
• persons and organisations who assist us in monitoring recorded calls for the purposes of quality assurance, training and acknowledgement
• our auditors, insurers and re-insurers
• employers or former employers (to verify employment in the case of loan applications)
• government and law enforcement agencies or regulators
• credit reporting bodies and other credit providers and
• organisations that help identify and investigate inappropriate or illegal activity, such as fraud.
• Consumer Data Right accredited data recipients where you have consented to the accredited data recipient collecting the personal information from us and we disclosing the personal information to the accredited data recipient (see our Consumer Data Right Policy which is available on our website and on request for more information).

Electronic verification of identity

Section A: 

We are required under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act to collect and verify information relating to your identity. Subject to your consent, we will disclose your name, address and date of birth in order to access identification information electronically held by credit reporting bodies, the government’s Documentation Verification Service (DVS)¹ and other public records.

To access such information, we use a service provider registered under the DVS. The service provider, may, for verification purposes on our behalf:

• request that a credit reporting body provide us with an assessment as to whether your personal information matches that held in their credit information files. (In preparing this assessment, the credit reporting body may use the personal information of other individuals);
• disclose your personal information to the DVS;
• search other public records.

Section B: 

We are also required under the State based real property laws to collect personal information and verify the identity of mortgagors for mortgages (VOI). These laws are: the Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2012 (NSW), Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2013 (Victoria), Electronic Conveyancing National Law (Queensland) Act 2013 (Queensland), Electronic Conveyancing Act 2014 (Western Australia), Electronic Conveyancing National Law (South Australia) Act 2013 (South Australia), Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2013 (Tasmania), Electronic Conveyancing (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2013 (Northern Territory) and Electronic Conveyancing National Law (ACT) Act 2020 (Australian Capital Territory). 

In this sub-section, “you” or “your” mean the proposed mortgagor(s). Subject to your consent, our identity verification is performed by a service provider, OCR Labs Pty Ltd (ACN 603 823 276) trading as IDVerse. To verify your identity, information about you, including data from your identity document(s), your biometric data and information about your device and location will be provided to IDVerse. For further details about how IDVerse may collect, hold, use or disclose your personal and sensitive information please refer to IDVerse’s privacy policy. 

If you do not consent to these processes, alternative forms of verifying your identity are available on request.

If we are unable to verify your identity using the above methods, you will be provided with a notice to that effect. You may then be asked to provide further evidence of your identity. If we are unable to verify your identity to our satisfaction, we will not be able to admit you to membership or provide you with the services or products you seek.

1. The DVS is a national online system that allows personal identifying information about individuals to be compared against government records. Your information will be matched against that held by the relevant government department or agency. You can find out more about the DVS on their website.

Our Privacy and Credit Reporting Policy and accessing personal information

Our Privacy and Credit Reporting Policy is available on our website. It contains information about:

• how we collect, use, hold and disclose your personal information
• how you can access personal information about you
• how you can seek correction of that personal information
• how you may complain if you think we may have breached your privacy
• how we will deal with your complaint and
• how we manage credit information.

Sending information overseas

Depending on our commercial arrangements, we may disclose personal information about you to business partners with operations overseas or who store personal information overseas (e.g. providers of lenders’ mortgage insurance (“LMI”). 

How to contact us

If you have any queries regarding privacy, use any of the methods set out below:

Teachers Mutual Bank Limited

Address: 28-38 Powell Street, HOMEBUSH NSW 2140
Phone: 13 12 21
Email: [email protected]
Post: PO Box 7501, SILVERWATER NSW 2128

Download a copy of our Privacy Consent - Lending

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