Privacy Policy
Introduction
This is the privacy policy of Marubeni Equipment Finance (Oceania) Pty Ltd (ABN 79 151 545 434) and its related companies, representing the brands of Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd, Bell Equipment Limited, Deere & Company and Marubeni Corporation (individually and together, “we , us or MEF”).
Our commitment
We are committed to protecting the privacy, accuracy and security of your personal information. Therefore we comply with the Australian Privacy Principles, observe our existing general law obligations regarding your personal information, and adhere to the credit provider provisions in the Privacy Act 1988 (as amended) (the Act).
What personal information we collect
We may collect personal information about you such as:
- your name, gender, date of birth, marital status, current address, previous address, email address and telephone numbers;
- drivers licence number an/or passport number;
- financial information (including credit history), bank account and/or credit card details, and personal references;
- business details (if you are applying as a business), or (if you are applying as an employee), current and previous places of employment, as well as the employers address and contact details.
MEF can only obtain personal information from you if you choose to supply it to MEF by entering your information in the appropriate sections on this website, or you supply it to us in other ways, such as in person, by telephone or in documentation such as an application form (which may be by an online application). We may also collect information when you make an enquiry of MEF. You are under no obligation to provide us with your personal information, but if you choose to do so, it will be accepted as your consent for us to collect and use it as set out in this policy.
We may also collect personal information from publicly available sources or third parties, such as a referee provided by you, a credit reporting body or other credit provider, an insurer of your property, or a person selling your debt to us.
In some circumstances if you do not provide the information that we request, we may not be able to provide our services to you or provide them to the same standard.
Why we collect your personal information
Briefly, MEF may use personal information provided to us, and share it with our employees and agents and other persons, in the ordinary course of business, as well as the business of any related company, alliance partner or agent or dealer in order to provide you with details of our products and services and the information that you have requested from us.
We may also collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information:
- to enable us to develop, administer and manage our services and businesses;
- to customise services to better meet your needs and preferences;
- to assess your application and manage your account with us;
- to compile a customer profile about you to serve you better;
- to engage a credit reporting body to conduct a credit and reference check;
- to assess your creditworthiness;
- for billing purposes and collection of debts;
- statistical purposes;
- future promotional and marketing purposes including direct marketing purposes;
- to inform you of special offers, promotions and competitions;
- for research purposes to better improve our websites, products or services;
- any other customer support purposes;
- to notify credit providers of a default by you or your agreement with us;
- to advise credit providers of the status of your agreement with us, in circumstances where you are in default with credit providers;
- to deal with complaints;
- to enforce our rights when you are in breach; and
- when authorised or required by law. These laws include:
- – the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), which requires us to collect personal information about you when verifying your identity;
- – the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth), which requires us to make inquiries about you when assessing an application for credit by you; and
- – the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth), under which we may need to collect personal information about you to record a security interest on the Personal Property Securities Register.
When we may disclose your personal information
In the course of conducting our business we may provide your personal information to:
- related companies or ours;
- distributors and introducers of our products and services;
- credit reporting bodies;
- other credit providers and insurers;
- service providers including mailhouses, printers, call centres, marketing companies, and technology providers;
- government bodies;
- persons who act as your guarantor or who provide security for credit to you;
- debt collectors and assignees of you debts; and
- our professional advisers, including our lawyers, auditors and accountants.
We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:
- to meet the purpose for which it was submitted;
- if we have your consent to do so or otherwise when we are authorised by law;
- if we are required by law to disclose the information.
Overseas recipients
We are likely to disclose personal information about you to overseas recipients who provide services for us and who do not have an Australian link. Those recipients are likely to be located in Japan. If you consent to us disclosing your personal information to them, we are not required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles. By using our services you agree to us disclosing your personal information to those overseas service providers.
Security of your personal information
All personal information held by us will be handled and stored in accordance with our obligations under the Privacy Act.
We will take reasonable steps to:
- make sure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up to date;
- protect the information from misuse, interference, loss or unauthorised access, modification or disclosure both physically and through computer security methods; and
- destroy or permanently de-identify the information if it is no longer needed for any purpose.
MEF may also maintain personal information (other than information we have obtained from a credit reporting agency) that we collect about you in a database so that we can provide better service to you in the future and provide this information to the our related companies for the purposes described in this policy.
Links to other sites
MEF’s website provides access to other sites by way of hyperlinks to these web sites. These other sites are not subject to the privacy standards and procedures of MEF. You should make your own enquiries as to the privacy standards for each linked site.
Our use of cookies
When you visit MEF’s website, our server may store a small data file known as a “cookie” to your hard drive. Cookies are pieces of information that may be transferred to your computer’s hard disk when you visit a website for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers accept cookies. However, if you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your web browser to refuse cookies. We use cookies to provide us with aggregate (anonymous) information on how people use our website and to help us know what our customers find interesting and useful in our website. We do not link this information back to other information that you have provided to us. We do not store any personal information inside cookies.
As most websites do, we sometimes track usage patterns on the website on an anonymous aggregate basis. Your identity cannot reasonably be ascertained from this information. Each time you visit our website, a web server may make a record of your visit specifically, it records your internet provider (IP) address; date and time of your visit; pages accessed; and the documents downloaded.