Privacy Policy

Storm Financial Limited abides by the National Privacy Principles established under the Privacy Amendment (Private sector) Act, 2001. A summary of the National Privacy Principles is available on our website or by contacting our office.

What type of information does Storm Financial Limited hold?

As a financial planning organization we are subject to certain legislative and regulatory requirements that necessitate us obtaining and holding detailed information that personally identifies you and/or contains information or an opinion about you (‘personal information’). In addition, our ability to provide you with a comprehensive financial planning and advice service is dependant on our obtaining certain personal information about you, including:

a) employment details and history
b) details of your financial needs and objectives
c) details of your current financial circumstances, including your assets and liabilities (both actual and potential), income, expenditure, insurance cover, tax returns and superannuation
d) details of your investment preferences and aversion to or tolerance of risk
e) information about your employment history, employment circumstances, family commitments and social security eligibility
f) tax file number
g) names, ages, and addresses of your dependants or beneficiaries
h) health information
i) other information you have given us
j) Your financial and lifestyle goals and aspirations

What happens if you do not wish to provide the requested personal information?

Failure to provide the personal information referred to above may expose you to higher risks in respect of the recommendations made to you and may affect the adequacy or appropriateness of advice we give to you.

As we are required pursuant to the Corporations Act and Rules of Professional Conduct of the Financial Planning Association of Australia Limited to collect sufficient information to ensure the appropriate advice can be given in respect of recommendations made to our clients, if you elect not to provide us with the personal information referred to above, we may elect to terminate our association with you if we believe we are unable to provide you with a complete service.

How does Storm Financial Limited collect information?

We will not collect any personal information about you except when you have knowingly provided that information to us or authorized a third party to provide that information to us.

Generally, collection of your personal information will be effected in either face-to-face interviews, over the telephone or by way of an online client application/detail form. From time to time additional and/or updated personal information may be collected through one or more of those methods.

We will only collect, maintain and use personal information about you that is necessary for us to adequately provide to you the services you have requested including:

a) the preparation of your financial plan
b) the provision of financial planning advice to you
c) making securities and investment recommendations
d) reviewing your financial plan
e) reviewing securities and investment recommendations
f) negotiations and dealing with financial institutions including banks, credit unions and building societies
g) the provision and review of insurance and superannuation advice to you.

How will Storm Financial Limited use your personal information?

We will not use or disclose personal information collected by us for any other purpose other than:

a) the purpose for which it was provided or secondary related purposes in circumstances where you would reasonably expect such use or disclosure; or
b) where you have consented to such disclosure; or
c) where the National Privacy Principles authorize use or disclosure where required or authorized under law, in circumstances relating to public health and safety and in connection with certain operations by or on behalf of an enforcement body.

We are required under the Rules of Professional Conduct of the Financial Planning Association of Australia Limited to make certain information available for inspection by the Association on request to ensure ongoing compliance with mandatory professional standards. This may involve the disclosure of your personal information. We are also obliged pursuant to the Corporations Act to maintain transaction records and make those records available for inspection by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

We may use the personal information collected from you for the purpose of providing you with direct marketing material such as articles that may be of interest to you, however you may, by contacting us by any of the methods detailed below, request not to receive such information, and we will give effect to that request. Please allow two weeks for your request to be actioned.

We may disclose your personal information to superannuation fund trustees, insurance providers, and product issuers and financial intermediaries for the purpose of giving effect to your financial plan and the recommendations made by us.

In order to ensure that you receive a personal and tailored service, your personal information may be transferred to one of our agents or Authorized Representatives who will be your primary point of contact with Storm Financial Limited.

It is a condition of our agreement with each of our representatives and our product providers that they adopt and adhere to this privacy policy. You can be assured that your information will be maintained by any agent or representatives in accordance with this policy. If you have any concerns in this regard, you should contact us by any of the methods detailed below.

In the event that we propose to sell our business, seek equity participation or publicly list the business, we may disclose your personal information to potential purchasers and/or independent experts for the purpose of them conducting due diligence investigations. Any such disclosure will be made in confidence and it will be a condition of that disclosure that no personal information will be used or disclosed by them. In the event that a sale of our business is effected, we may transfer your personal information to the purchaser of the business. As a client you will be advised of any such transfer.

What are the Storm Financial Limited document storage and security policies and practices?

Your personal information is generally held in your client file and/or in a computer database.

We will at all times seek to ensure that the personal information collected and held by Storm is protected from misuse, loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. At all times your personal information is treated as confidential and any sensitive information is treated as highly confidential. All paper files are stored within our premises, which are locked and alarmed out of hours.

All record movements off premises are recorded in a central register. Access to our premises is controlled by allowing only personnel with security passes to access the premises. Building has both security entry and alarm codes. All computer-based information is protected through the use of access passwords on each computer and screen saver passwords. Data is backed up each evening and stored securely offsite.

In the event that you cease to be a client of this organisation, any personal information that we hold about you will be maintained in our archived files within our computer systems. Only authorized persons have access to the archived files for a period of seven years in order to comply with legislative and professional requirements, following which time the information will be destroyed.

Can you have access to your personal information?

You may at any time, by contacting us by any of the methods detailed below, request access to your personal information and we will (subject to the following exceptions) provide you with access to that information whether by providing you with copies of the information requested, allowing you to inspect the information requested or providing you with an accurate summary of the information held. We will, prior to providing access in accordance with this policy, require you to provide evidence of your identity.

We will not provide you access to personal information which would reveal any confidential formulae or the detail of any in-house evaluative decision making process, but may instead provide you with the result of the formulae or process or an explanation of that result.

We will not provide you with access to your personal information if:

a) providing access would pose a serious threat to the life or health of a person
b) providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others
c) the request for access is frivolous or vexatious
d) the information is related to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between us and would not be discoverable in those proceedings
e) providing access would reveal our intentions in relation to negotiations with you in such a way as to prejudice those negotiations
f) providing access would be unlawful
g) denying access is required or authorized by or under law
h) providing access would be likely to prejudice certain operations by or on behalf of an enforcement body or an enforcement body requests that access not be provided on the grounds of national security.

In the event we refuse access to your personal information, we will provide you with an explanation for that refusal.

What if the information Storm Financial Limited holds is incorrect?

We will endeavour to ensure that at all times the personal information collected about you, which we hold, is up to date and accurate. In the event that you become aware, or believe, that any personal information which we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or outdated, you may contact us by any of the methods detailed below and provide to us evidence of the inaccuracy or incompleteness or out datedness and we will, if we agree that the information requires correcting, take all reasonable steps to correct the information.

If we do not agree that your personal information requires correcting, we must, if you request, take reasonable steps to ensure that whenever your personal information is accessed or handled in the future, it is apparent that you are not satisfied as to the accuracy or completeness of that information.

We will endeavour to respond to any request for access within 14-30 days depending on the complexity of the information and/or the request. If your request is urgent please indicate this clearly.

What do I do if I have a complaint?

If you wish to complain about any breach or potential breach of this privacy policy or the National Privacy Principles, you should contact us by any of the methods detailed below and request that your complaint be directed to the Privacy Officer. Your complaint will be considered within seven days and responded to. It is our intention to use our best endeavours to resolve any complaint to your satisfaction, however, if you are unhappy with our response, you are entitled to contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner who may investigate your complaint further.

Privacy and Our Website

Storm Financial Limited's website may contain links to other websites whose operator may or may not adhere to a privacy policy or be governed by the National Privacy Principles.

While it is not necessary to register your personal details to use our website, we do offer a registration service that will enable you to receive product and service updates, newsletters and other information. In the event you do register with us, we will collect personal information from you including your name and email address.

If you have registered with us and decide, at any time, that you do not wish to receive any further information from us, you can send an email to the email address noted below requesting to be removed from our online registration database. Please allow two weeks for your request to be actioned.

The ‘Storm Financial Research Online Services’ website uses cookies, which allows us to identify you when you are logged in. While you are logged in to our system, your activities will be monitored, tracked and recorded. This allows us to record your web usage and level of interest in various areas of our website, which helps us provide you with the best possible finance tools we can make available. All browsers allow you to be notified when you receive a cookie and elect to either accept it or not. Your Internet Service Provider should be able to assist you to set your preferences.

The reasons why we have decided to monitor website usage are below:

Benefits for You

• The monitoring of your web usage allows us to optimise the usability of Storm Financial Limited’s online services and identify the most popular tools for your convenience.
• Allows us to create tools that are tailored for your needs, to provide information that YOU want, not information that the market or we want you to see.
• Benefits you by allowing Storm Financial Limited to quickly identify, respond and eliminate technical problems in order to provide you with the best and most accurate possible information at any given time.
• Keeps for you a record of your own usage of our website and allows you to refer back in date sequence to any and all previous usages.

Benefits for Us

• Provides us with statistics on how often certain tools are used and what information is being most frequently accessed.
• Allows us to monitor website traffic and find out peak access hours in order keep our system operational at all times.
• Enables us to prevent fraudulent access to our systems and create a secure and stable website.
• Enables the use of our credit system whereby future tools developed for our website will incur a cost for their use.
• Allows us to remain at the forefront of financial research by identifying the market's genuine information needs.
• Uncover other possible uses of the website and make possible the development of new research tools.
  

Contact Details

Privacy Officer: Mrs Julie Cassimatis
PO Box 5066, Townsville QLD 4810
382-432 Sturt Street
Townsville QLD 4810
Phone: 07 4772 5377
Fax: 07 4721 2192
info@stormfinancial.com.au

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