Privacy Policy
We recognise the importance of protecting and maintaining personal information. We understand that you may have concerns about your privacy and about the security, accuracy and confidentiality of personal information.
Equipe Advisory Pty Ltd (ACN 650 726 257) is committed to providing high quality professional accounting and advisory services whilst also protecting your privacy. We abide by the Australian Privacy Principles established under the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012 and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act).
Our Privacy Policy (“Policy”) sets out how we collect, process and handle personal information. This Policy is subject to change.
By voluntarily supplying us with your personal information you are agreeing to be bound by this Policy.
Management of personal information
Equipe Advisory manages personal information in compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles. We will remain open with you about what sort of personal information we hold, how we collect it and for what purposes we use and disclose this information.
If you believe that Equipe Advisory has breached the Australian Privacy Principles, please contact the Privacy Officer in writing. We will respond to you within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may take your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Anonymity
Where lawful and practical to do so, you can initially engage with us without disclosing your real name or by using a fictitious name. However once you seek to engage our services formally, this will not longer be practical as it will hinder our capacity to provide you with services.
Collection of solicited personal information
Our ability to provide you with a comprehensive and accurate service is reliant on us obtaining certain personal information. This can include:
- name and contact details, date of birth and gender identification;
- financial information like bank account details and assets & liabilities;
- documentation used for identification and verification purposes.
Some personal information is considered to be ‘sensitive information’. It may be necessary in some instances for us to collect sensitive information about you, for example, your Tax File Number, professional memberships and health information.
We will collect information that is reasonably necessary for the primary purpose of providing a professional service to you and also for complying with our legal obligations. If this information is considered sensitive, then unless the law provides otherwise, we will also require your consent to the collection of this sensitive information. We will only collect sensitive information if it is necessary to provide our services to you and is done in a fair and lawful manner.
How we deal with unsolicited personal information
If we receive unsolicited personal information that we know could have been collected from you, we will afford it the same privacy protection as if we had solicited this personal information.
If the information is not reasonably necessary for one or more of our services or we know that we could not normally have collected the personal information, we will destroy or de-identify the information as soon as practicable, unless it is unlawful or unreasonable to do so.
Notification of the collection of personal information
We will endeavour to collect personal information directly from you. Periodically, we may need to collect personal information from a third party. We will advise you of when this is the case and also explain the purpose for the collection of this information and to whom it may be disclosed to.
In some circumstances, Equipe Advisory uses third party information sources to obtain information. This may include public registers or other organisations to which you share a business relationship.
Your personal information – how we use it and disclose it
We collect, hold and use your personal information for the following purposes:
- to provide our accounting, taxation and business advisory services to you;
- to assist you in managing your financial and corporate affairs;
- to organise services for you, on your behalf, in relation to authorised third party service providers (refer Engagement Letter for a list of those third parties);
- to inform you of new services that Equipe Advisory can provide (unless you advise us otherwise);
- in compliance with statutory authorities or directed by law;
- to optimise our service offering to you and including our staff; and
- any other purpose reasonably connected with the above.
Together the above represent the “primary purposes” for which information is collected.
We will not use or disclose personal information collected by us for any purpose other than the primary purposes. There may be instances that you might reasonably expect us to use or disclose the information for a secondary purpose and we also may ask for your consent to use the information for additional purposes.
Exceptions to this include where disclosure is:
- required by law or for inspection to ensure compliance with mandatory professional standards;
- reasonably necessary to assist a law enforcement agency
- external service providers for the purposes of audit, peer reviews, legal advice, consultancy or outsourced administration;
- required by reporting entities for the purpose of complying with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing legislation;
- permitted under the Australian Privacy Principles.
Where we have collected the information from you, we may use this information for the purpose of Equipe Advisory direct marketing, to conduct Equipe Advisory surveys, to notify of seminars and other events organised by or sanctioned by Equipe Advisory, to seek your feedback and for any other business-related purposes.
This will not be shared with third parties and you will be provided with the opportunity of “opting out” from any direct marketing activities or marketing communications you do not wish to receive.
Disclosure of personal information in other jurisdictions
Equipe Advisory uses various cloud based software providers in carrying out its professional services. As part of this process, there may be data stored, backed up in data centres located outside of Australia. We may transfer or store your personal information outside Australia if we engage with, or are required to send personal information to, an overseas entity to fulfil the purpose for which the personal information was collected (or a related or ancillary purpose).
If we do permit personal information to be stored in an overseas location, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that this recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles or a similar applicable law in relation to that information.
Quality of personal information
We aim to ensure that the personal information we collect, hold, use or disclose is up to date, accurate and complete. We will take reasonable steps to correct personal information. If you become aware, or believe, that any personal information we hold is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, please contact your usual Equipe Advisory staff member to address this.
Security of personal information
We approach the security of your personal information with the utmost priority.
We employ both physical and electronic procedures to ensure that we are adopting strong security protocols to protect the personal information we hold both in physical and electronic forms. These procedures include confidentiality agreements adopted with all Equipe Advisory staff, policies in relation to storage of files, security measures with our systems access rights and security systems in our office premises.
Our goal is for your information to be protected from risks such as misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or mis-disclosure. We take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify any personal information no longer required.
Your access to personal information
Individuals may at any time request access to their own personal information that we hold about them. Wherever we can we will provide you with access to that information either by providing you with copies or allowing you to inspect the information requested.
If, for any reason, we refused to give you access to the personal information, or perhaps in relation to the specific manner that you have requested it we will articulate our reasons as to why in writing. A refusal will likely only be in a situation where this action is permitted by the Australian Privacy Principles or is otherwise lawful.
Please direct your requests for access to personal information, in writing, to the Privacy Officer. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period and we may charge a fee for supplying this personal information if it is reasonable to do so.
Accuracy of personal information
If we hold information about you for a purpose and know it to be incorrect or out of date or otherwise not necessary for the primary purposes, we will take steps to correct the information. If you request us to correct the information, we will take reasonable steps to do so. If a third party is relying on this information, at your request we will also notify them, unless it is impracticable or unlawful to do so.
If we refuse to make a correction, we will let you know why and the complaint mechanisms that are available to you. If we continue to use this information, you may request us to associate a statement that the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
All requests for correction to personal information should be in writing to the Privacy Officer. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period after the request is made. We will not charge you a fee for making the request for the correction of personal information.
Privacy and our website – “cookies”
When you visit our website, we collect statistical data about that visit which is not personally identifiable.
We use this information for statistical purposes and to improve our website. We generally only collect personal information from our website when it is provided voluntarily by you. The types of information collected may include your server address, your domain name, the time of your website visit, the duration of the stay and other similar information.
Please note that if our website has links to other websites or web pages outside of our domain, you will no longer be covered by this Policy and should not submit personal information to that other site without first considering their own Privacy Policy.
Contact Equipe Advisory
All requests for access or correction to personal information, privacy complaints, queries in relation to this Privacy Policy, or any other privacy related matter, should be directed to the Privacy Officer as follows:
Equipe Advisory Pty Ltd
GPO Box 651
Adelaide SA 5001
Phone: (08) 8211 8993
Email: privacy@equipeadvisory.com.au
We will respond to your request within a reasonable time and in accordance with the requirements of the Privacy Act. If you have made a privacy complaint and believe that Equipe Advisory has not adequately handled your complaint, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner www.oaic.gov.au .
Last updated July 2021.