Credit Reporting Notice and Consent

1. What you are agreeing to

You authorise Legal Finance Group Pty Ltd (ACN 690 811 299, ABN 31 690 811 299) to obtain a consumer credit report about you from Equifax Australia Information Services and Solutions Pty Ltd (equifax.com.au), or from another credit reporting body we tell you about before we use it, and to use the report to assess your application for funding — including to check whether you have been bankrupt, are subject to a personal-insolvency agreement, or have unpaid defaults or court judgments — and to help verify your identity.

We obtain one report, when we assess this application. If we need another report later — for example if you apply for further funding — we will ask for your consent again. We do not monitor your credit file.

Separately from any credit report, we may search public registers — the National Personal Insolvency Index kept by the Australian Financial Security Authority, and court lists. Those searches do not need your consent, and we tell you about them here so that you know they happen.

2. If you do not agree

You do not have to agree. If you do not, we cannot assess your application, because the check is part of how we decide whether to fund a matter. Nothing else you have told us is affected.

3. Information we may give the credit reporting body

We may disclose to the credit reporting body the identifying information needed to obtain your report: your name, date of birth and address. We do not report repayment history, defaults or account information to any credit reporting body. The Privacy Act would allow us to disclose a payment default of $150 or more that is at least 60 days overdue, or a serious credit infringement, after giving you notice; we do not currently do so, and if that changes we will notify you before we do.

4. What the credit reporting body does with it

The credit reporting body records the fact that we asked for a report — an "enquiry" — on your credit file. Under the Privacy Act our request does not need your consent; we ask for it anyway, so that nothing happens on your file that you did not expect. The credit reporting body, and other credit providers who obtain a report about you, may use the enquiry record to assess your creditworthiness, including to calculate a credit score. In general terms, a single enquiry has a small effect on a score, and several enquiries in a short period can lower it.

The credit reporting body may also include the other information we give it in reports it provides to other credit providers. Its credit reporting policy, at equifax.com.au/privacy, explains how it manages credit information and how to contact it.

The report we receive will not include repayment history information or financial hardship information, because the Privacy Act allows a credit reporting body to give those only to the holder of an Australian credit licence, which we are not.

5. Your rights

• You may ask us, and the credit reporting body, for access to the credit information held about you, and ask for it to be corrected if it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
• You may complain to us, and to the credit reporting body, about how your credit information is handled. We acknowledge a complaint within 7 days and give you our decision within 30 days. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
• If you believe you have been, or are likely to be, a victim of fraud (including identity fraud), you can ask the credit reporting body not to use or disclose your credit reporting information for a ban period.
• You can ask the credit reporting body not to use your credit reporting information to pre-screen you for direct marketing by credit providers.

6. How we manage credit information

Credit reports and the information we derive from them are held in Australia, are accessible only to the credit staff assessing your application, are logged whenever they are opened, and are destroyed or de-identified when they are no longer needed for the purposes above and are not required to be kept by law. Section 7 of our Privacy Policy, at legalfinancegroup.com.au/disclosures/privacy, is our credit reporting policy and says more about how we handle credit information and how to access or correct it. We will give you a paper copy of this notice, or of that policy, at no charge if you ask.