Privacy Collection Notice – Chat Service

This notice is required by law and provides you with information about the privacy of your collected information. It is provided by Financial Counselling Australia and on behalf of the financial counselling agencies that participate in the Chat Service. The contact details of all these organisations are at the foot of this notice.

Your personal information is collected for the purposes of providing you with financial counselling services.

Depending on your circumstances, some information may be collected that is classified by law as sensitive information, for example, information about your language background.

Without the collected information, it will not be possible, or it will be harder for a financial counsellor to meet your needs.

Your collected information will be stored in a secured database.  This is only able to be accessed by:

• the financial counsellor(s) who provide financial counselling services to you and the financial counselling agencies through which they work,
• Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) administrators of the Chat Service and other staff who analyse and collate chat data and insights including for training purposes, and
• FCA external service providers who facilitate the Chat Service.

Your personal information may also form part of de-identified information (no names or identifying details included) that is used to explain the work of the Chat Service including advocating in the media and otherwise lobbying for changes to laws or industry practice to improve consumer protection and to report to Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS). De-identified information is sent to DSS to assist DSS to assess the performance of the Chat Service and for related research purposes.

Your personal information will not be provided to any overseas recipients.

Each of the organisations involved in the provision to you of financial counselling services via chat has a privacy policy (links given below). You can read these to find out more information about how you can access your personal information, seek to correct your personal information and make a complaint about a breach of privacy.  Also, how complaints about a breach of privacy are dealt with.