Credit Reporting Policy – Volvo Group Australia

Updated on 1 June 2023
 

Volvo Group Australia Pty Ltd (ABN 27 000 761 259) (“Volvo Group Australia”, “we”, “us” or “our”) collects personal information about you on behalf of AB Volvo (the company incorporated under Swedish law with official registration number 556012-5790) and all of its global affiliates and subsidiaries (“Volvo Group”). We are committed to protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your credit information and credit eligibility information. In handling your credit information and credit eligibility information, we are bound by, and comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”), and the Privacy (Credit Reporting) Code 2014 (Cth) (“Code”).  In this Credit Reporting Policy, “you” (and “your”) means you the individual with whom we are dealing or, in the case of a legal entity, that legal entity, and its individual owners, officers, guarantors, employees, contractors or representatives whose credit information and credit eligibility information we may need to process in order to provide the requested services and for any of the purposes described below. 

This Credit Reporting Policy sets out how we process your credit information and credit eligibility information, how you can access credit information and credit eligibility information we hold about you and how you can complain about our processing of your credit information and credit eligibility information. 
 

Certain terms used in this Credit Reporting Policy are defined in Section 8.
 

1.What kinds of credit information do we collect and hold, and how is it collected and held?

The credit information we collect and hold may include any of the following types of personal information:

• identification details;
• credit liability;
• credit eligibility information;
• repayment history;
• information requests from credit reporting bodies (CRBs);
• details about consumer credit or commercial credit sought in a credit application made by you;
• defaults;
• payment information;
• payment arrangements;
• court actions and other enforcement proceedings;
• insolvency events;
• publicly available credit information; and
• serious credit infringements – credit fraud (attempted or actual) and/or avoidance of obligations in relation to consumer credit.
   

If you choose not to provide this information, our ability to process your or your company’s credit application or accept you as a guarantor for such application, or to provide you with the products and services requested, may be limited.
 

Wherever possible, we will collect credit information directly from you when you apply for consumer credit, commercial credit or other products and services we provide.  This is done in a number of ways, such as direct meetings with you, written applications for credit by you and when you contact us by phone, email, or through our interactive facilities, such as customer enquiry, online finance applications or comment forms. 
 

In some circumstances, we may also collect your credit information from third parties, such other members of the Volvo Group, your broker or accountant, or other persons who you refer to us. 
 

We may collect your credit information, including as to your credit worthiness, from the CRBs set out in Section 5, and other credit providers as further described in this Credit Reporting Policy. 
 

If you provide us with any personal information relating to any other individual (for instance, personal information of referees, guarantors, or employers), you are responsible for giving all notifications, and obtaining all consents required for us to process that information in connection with the purposes of the disclosure.
 

All information we hold about you is held in electronic and/or hardcopy form, and securely stored in accordance with the section titled ‘How will VOLVO hold your personal data, and offshore locations’ in the Privacy Policy available at https://www.volvotrucks.com.au/en-au/tools/privacy.html.
 

2.Purposes for which we process credit information and credit eligibility information

We process your credit information and credit eligibility information for the primary purposes of:
 

• assessing your credit application, or the credit application of a company of which you represent, or are proposing to be a guarantor for;
• assessing whether to accept you as a guarantor for a credit application; 
• sourcing any required insurances;
• administering your credit application or guarantee and any associated insurance requirements, including collecting overdue payments;
• notifying the CRB of any overdue payments on consumer credit, provided they are more than 60 days overdue, we have attempted to collect the payment and we have notified you of our intention to do so;
• notifying the CRB of a serious credit infringement of your consumer credit if we have reasonable grounds to believe that you fraudulently obtained, or attempted to fraudulently obtain, consumer credit from us or you have shown an intention to evade your obligations under the contract with us. Note that we will only do this if we have not been able to contact you over a 6 month period;
• asking the CRB to assess your eligibility to receive direct marketing material from us;
• providing you with products and services, and managing, performing and enforcing any associated contract with us or Volvo Group, including ongoing credit analysis and risk management;
• complying with laws, which may include the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism and Financing Act 2006 (Cth) or the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth);
• addressing, investigating and preventing fraud or crime; or
• performing any other action that is permitted under applicable law.
   

We may also handle your credit information and credit eligibility information for other secondary purposes relating to our or Volvo Group’s legitimate business purposes, including internal management purposes.
 

3.Disclosure of your credit information or credit eligibility information

We may disclose your credit information or credit eligibility information to third parties where reasonably required in connection with the purposes of collection, including to:
 

• our CRBs;
• any other credit provider where you have or may have a consumer or commercial credit interest;
• guarantors or prospective guarantors relating to a credit application, or applicants relating to a credit application for which you are a guarantor or prospective guarantor;
• the dealership where your vehicle is purchased or Volvo Group’s other authorised dealerships;
• insurers, insurance brokers and insurance assessors;
• debt collection agencies
• parties who you refer to us or parties who refer us to you, including your broker;
• Volvo Group members, and their employees, contractors, auditors, advisers, third party service providers (including, without limitation, IT service providers, document custodians and securitisers), or business partners;
• an organisation that may wish to acquire, or has acquired, an interest in Volvo Group’s business or any rights under a contract between us and you or a company which you represent, or for which you act as a guarantor for a party, including an interest in future receivables; and
• government authorities and law enforcement agencies, as required by law.
   

4.Disclosure of credit information and credit eligibility information to overseas recipients

We may disclose your credit information and credit eligibility information to members of the Volvo Group, or their service providers, who are outside of Australia and who may not have an Australian link. 
 

It is not possible to anticipate or list all third countries to which we might need to transfer your credit information and credit eligibility information but, as a guide, the countries to which we are most likely to transfer your information will be the countries in which we presently do business and, more particularly, where we presently have our Global or Regional Head Quarters and global and regional data centres.  Those countries are: (1) USA, (2) Sweden, (3) France, (4) China, (5) Brazil, (6) Poland and (7) the Netherlands. 
 

We take reasonable steps to ensure that members of the Volvo Group and third party recipients located outside of Australia do not breach the relevant provisions of the Privacy Act.
 

5.Your consent to our processing

By signing a credit application, or contracting or engaging with us for the provision of products and services, or offering to be a guarantor for an agreement, you consent to us:

• collecting your credit eligibility information from our CRBs, or from another credit provider where you may have or have a consumer or commercial credit interest, to assist us with assessing your credit application, or the credit application of a company of which you represent, and for purposes reasonably necessary to assess, arrange, provide or administer such credit application or guarantee and any associated insurance requirements;
• reviewing your consumer and commercial credit information held by a CRB each time an application is made to us to finance equipment under any agreement you have with us, or any agreement with us that you are a guarantor under;
• processing credit information and credit eligibility information relating to you (or individuals whose data you have lawfully collected and shared with us) and which you have provided to us directly or indirectly, or which we have lawfully obtained from a third party for the purposes set out in this Credit Reporting Policy;
• disclosing credit eligibility information to other credit providers with an Australian link where you may have or have a consumer or commercial credit interest for purposes relating to assessing your financial status or whether to accept you as a guarantor for a credit applicant; and
• disclosing credit information and credit eligibility information to members of the Volvo Group, and their employees, contractors, auditors and advisers and/or a third party with whom we do business or from whom we obtain services,
  
  in so far as is permitted by applicable law.
  
  

6.How you can access, amend or correct your credit information or credit eligibility information

You have a right to access and request amendments to your credit information and credit eligibility information information if it is out-of-date, incomplete or inaccurate.
 

You can request access or amendments to the information we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer:

Telephone: hrsc.au@volvo.com

Email:  +61 7 3718 3500

Address: 41 Bivouac Place, Wacol Qld 4076
 

In some cases an administration fee may be charged to cover the cost of providing the information.
 

If your request relates to information which has been provided by a CRB or another credit provider, we may need to consult with them about the request.
 

You can also access the credit information that the CRB holds about you by contacting the CRB for a copy of that information, at:
 

7.Complaints relating to credit information and credit eligibility information

If you wish to make a complaint that we have not complied with Part IIIA of the Privacy Act or the Code, you should contact the Privacy Officer (complaints officer) noted above to lodge a complaint.
 

Once we receive your complaint, we will acknowledge it in writing within 7 days and attempt to resolve it within 30 days and if we are unable to do so, we will let you know why there is a delay, the expected timeframe to resolve the complaint and seek your agreement to an extension for a reasonable period.
 

If you do not believe we have handled the complaint properly and you are not satisfied with the response, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (Telephone +61 1300 363 992, mail to GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001 or online privacy complaint form at https://forms.business.gov.au/smartforms/servlet/SmartForm.html?formCode=APC_PC&tmFormVersion).
 

If the complaint relates to how we have handled a complaint, you may contact the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, our external dispute resolution system.
 

8.Definitions

“CP derived information” means any personal information (other than sensitive information) derived by us from credit information that we obtained from a CRB or derived by a CRB from credit information it holds about you; that has any bearing on your credit worthiness and that is, has been or could be used to decide your eligibility for consumer credit.
 

“CRB” means a credit reporting body.
 

“credit information” has the meaning given under the Privacy Act, and may include the information set out in Section 1.
 

“credit eligibility information” has the meaning given under the Privacy Act, and means information we obtain in, or derive from, your credit application and/or from a CRB. Credit eligibility information includes CP derived information.
 

"personal information" means any information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:

• whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
• whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not, and includes “personal information” as defined under the Privacy Act.  
   

“process” means to collect, hold, use, copy, disclose or perform any other set of operations on, credit information and credit eligibility information.