6. Credit checks and credit reporting
When you apply for credit, then, under the responsible lending obligations in the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, credit providers need to see your credit history and present position in order to assist them in meeting their obligations.
Consequently, we may obtain a credit report about you from a credit reporting body when you apply for credit with us.
Credit reports
A credit report contains information about your credit history. This helps us assess your credit worthiness, credit applications, verify your identity and manage the loan accounts and credit facilities you have with us.
What information can we exchange with credit reporting bodies?
The information we exchange includes your identification details, what type of loans you have, how much you’ve borrowed, whether or not you’ve met your payment obligations and if you have committed a serious credit infringement.
We also ask the credit reporting body to provide us with an overall assessment score of your creditworthiness.
The credit reporting bodies we use are:
- Equifax Australia Information Services and Solutions Pty Ltd (Equifax Australia)
- Experian Australia Credit Services Pty Ltd (Experian Australia)
You can download copies of these organisations’ privacy policies as follows:
- Equifax Australia — at equifax.com.au
- Experian Australia — at experian.com.au
Comprehensive credit reporting
We can pass to a credit reporting body or bodies (the ones we use are Equifax Australia, Experian Australia or illion or all of them) details of your credit information and history — including credit you have applied for, the amounts you have borrowed, whether or not payments have been made on time.
Pre-screening and restricting disclosure in cases of fraud
Credit providers may ask credit reporting bodies to use their credit-related information to pre-screen you for direct marketing. You can ask a credit reporting body not to do this. Also, if you’ve been, or have reason to believe that you may have been, are, or likely to become, a victim of fraud (including identity fraud), you can ask the credit reporting body not to use or disclose the credit-related information it holds about you.
Accessing your information and making a complaint
You can access your credit information, request that we correct any information and make a complaint in the same manner as you can with the remainder of the personal information we hold. See Clauses 8 and 9.