At Counselling Appraisal Consultants Pty Ltd (CAC), we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. This Privacy Policy describes our current policies and practices in relation to the collection, handling, use and disclosure of personal information. It also deals with how you can complain about a breach of the privacy laws and how you can access the personal information we hold and how to have that information corrected. 

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What information do we collect and how do we use it? 

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We ask you for the information we need to provide you with our services. This can include a broad range of information ranging from your name, address, contact details, age and other information about your personal affairs including your assets, personal belongings, financial situation, health and wellbeing including medical reports from your health practitioners. We provide any information to individuals or organisations that we may use to assist in providing our services.  

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Those individuals or organisations may in turn pass on this information to their affiliates or related companies. Some of these companies may be located outside Australia. If this is likely to happen, we will inform you of where the organisation is located, if it is possible to do so. 

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When you make a claim, we assist you by collecting information about your claim. Sometimes we also need to collect information about you from others. We may provide this information to your employer, occupational health agencies, government agencies and their service providers, medical providers, insurers (or anyone they have appointed to assist, eg loss adjusters, medical brokers etc.) to enable it to consider your claim. 

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From time to time, we will use your contact details to send you direct marketing communications including offers, updates and newsletters that are relevant to the services we provide. We always give you the option of electing not to receive these communications in the future. You can unsubscribe by notifying us and we will no longer send this information to you. 

 

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What if you don’t provide some information to us? 

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We can only fully advise and assist you if we have all relevant information. 

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When do we disclose your information overseas? 

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Counselling Appraisal Consultants Pty. Ltd. is owned by Howden Pacific Holdings Pty Ltd and is part of Howden Group Holdings Limited (UK). We may share your personal data with Howden Group Limited and other Howden Group Companies in order to identify any other services which the Howden Group offers and may be of interest to you (where we have appropriate permission) or for ancillary services to be provided to Counselling Appraisal Consultants Pty Ltd.

 

 

We may also disclose information we collect to the providers of our administration and other systems that help us to provide our products and services to you. These administration and systems providers may be supported and maintained by organisations in New Zealand, the Philippines, and Vietnam and your information may be disclosed to those organisations. Please note that the Privacy Act and Australian Privacy Principles may not apply to these organisations. 
 

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How do we hold and protect your information? 

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We strive to maintain the reliability, accuracy, completeness and currency of the personal information we hold and to protect its privacy and security. We keep personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected or to comply with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or document retention requirements. 

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We hold and store the information we collect from you electronically. If we receive any paper copies of information from you, we image and store a copy of that information electronically. We place the paper copies of that information in our onsite secure shredding bin. In some cases, your file may be archived and sent to an external data storage provider for a period of time. We only use storage providers located in Australia who are also regulated by the Privacy Act.  

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We ensure that your information is safe by protecting it from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. We maintain physical security over our paper and electronic data and premises, by using locks and security systems. We also maintain computer and network security; for example, we use firewalls (security measures for the Internet) and other security systems such as user identifiers and passwords to control access to computer systems where your information is stored. 

 

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Will we disclose the information we collect to anyone? 

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We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others.  

 

We may need to provide your information to contractors who supply services to us, e.g. to handle mailings on our behalf, external data storage providers or to other companies in the event of a corporate sale, merger, re-organisation, dissolution or similar event.  We may also disclose information we collect to our administration and systems providers that help us to provide our products and services to you. However, we will take reasonable measures to ensure that they protect your information as required under the Privacy Act.  

 

e may provide your information to others if we are required to do so by law, you consent to the disclosure or under some unusual other circumstances which the Privacy Act permits. 
 

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How can you check, update or change the information we are holding? 

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Upon receipt of your written request and enough information to allow us to identify the information, we will disclose to you the personal information we hold about you. We will also correct, amend or delete any personal information that we agree is inaccurate, irrelevant, out of date or incomplete.  

 

If you wish to access or correct your personal information please write to CAC at 50 Boundary Street, South Melbourne, VIC 3205 or email reception@cac.com.au. 

 

We do not charge for receiving a request for access to personal information or for complying with a correction request. Where the information requested is not a straightforward issue and will involve a considerable amount of time then a charge will need to be confirmed for responding to the request for the information. 

 

In some limited cases, we may need to refuse access to your information or refuse a request for correction. We will advise you as soon as possible after your request if this is the case and the reasons for our refusal. 
 

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What happens if you want to complain? 

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If you have concerns about whether we have complied with the Privacy Act or this Privacy Policy when collecting or handling your personal information, you may contact the Privacy Officer for the Howden group in Australia at the following details: -

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By post or in person: Level 23, 20 Bond Street, Sydney NSW 2000, or by email to privacy.pacific@howdengroup.com.

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Your complaint will be considered by us through our internal complaints resolution process and we will try to respond with a decision within 30 days of you making the complaint. 
 

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Your consent 

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By asking us to assist with your needs, you consent to the collection and use of the information you have provided to us for the purposes described above. 
 

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Website information and content

The information provided on this website does not cover all aspects of the law on the relevant subject matter. Professional advice should be sought before any action is taken based upon the matters described and discussed on this site. 

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To the extent permitted by law, we make no representations about the suitability of the content of this site for any purpose. All content is provided without any warranty of any kind. We disclaim all warranties and conditions with regard to the content, including but not limited to all implied warranties and conditions of fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.
 
We will not be liable for any damages or injury caused by, including but not limited to, any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, defect, delay in operation of transmission, computer virus, or line failure. To the extent permitted by law we will not be liable for any damages or injury, including but not limited to, special or consequential damages that result from the use of, or the inability to use, the materials in this site. 

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We believe the content of this site to be accurate, complete and current, however there are no warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or currency of the content. It is your responsibility to verify any information before relying on it. The content of this site may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.

 

We reserve the right to modify the content of this site from time to time. 
 

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Anonymous data

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We use technology to collect anonymous information about the use of our website, for example when you browse our website our service provider logs your server address, the date and time of your visit, the pages and links accessed and the type of browser used. It does not identify you personally and we only use this information for statistical purposes and to improve the content and functionality of our website, to better understand our clients and markets and to improve our services. 
 

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Cookies

In order to collect this anonymous data we may use “cookies”. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to record some aspects of a website and to provide information to the owners of the website. Our cookies do not store personal information or obtain information about you, your family, or read any material on your hard drive. You can adjust the settings in your web browser to determine whether sites can set cookies on your computer. You can also manage what cookies we set when you visit our website.

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For more details on cookies, the types we use, and managing your preferences, head to our Cookie Policy page.

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Forms 

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Our Website allows visitors to submit information via “General contact queries”. The information submitted via “General contact queries” is not encrypted – an option is available for queries to be emailed to reception@cac.com.au.  Should you be concerned about the confidentiality of claim information, we recommend you ring us on 1300 786 860. 

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Information collected via “General contact queries” is sent to our offices via email (not encrypted) and is also stored on a database which is accessible by CAC (password protected). 

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We also use your information to send you requested product information and promotional material and to enable us to manage your ongoing requirements and our relationship with you, e.g. invoicing, etc.  

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We may use your personal data to send you direct marketing communications about our insurance products or our related services. This may be in the form of email, post, SMS, telephone or targeted online advertisements. We limit direct marketing to a reasonable and proportionate level, and to send you communications that we believe may be of interest or relevance to you, based on the information we have about you. If you would rather not receive this information or do not wish to receive it electronically, please email or write to us.  

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We may use your information internally to help us improve our services and help resolve any problems. 
 

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Tell us what you think

 

We welcome your questions and comments about privacy. If you have any concerns or complaints, please contact Howden Australia’s Privacy Officer on 1300 904 503 or by email privacy.pacific@howdengroup.com.