We collect personal information primarily for the purposes of understanding your insurance requirements and providing you with quality advice about our products and services.
Other purposes include:
We collect a broad range of personal information in the course of our general business, typically: name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details, insurance history, details on your insurance needs, medical history, and criminal history.
Wherever possible, we collect information directly from you.
We begin collecting information when you first request information about or apply for a product, or you begin the claim process. Over the course of the business relationship, we may request additional personal information.
We collect personal information in a variety of ways: over the phone, meeting with you in person, via email, or over the internet if you complete forms on our website.
If we request personal information from you and you do not supply it, we may be unable to provide you with the product or service you require (such as offering you an insurance product or processing a claim under an existing insurance policy).
On some occasions we may collect personal information from a third party in the course of assessing eligibility for an insurance product or assessing an insurance claim under your policy.
This may occur when collecting the information from you is impractical or where you have consented to us collecting it from someone else. Regardless of the source of the personal information, we will endeavour to protect the privacy of your information.
Third parties may include:
- SBS Bank and/or SBS Bank Group companies if you are an existing customer
- Where you have appointed an agent to act on your behalf e.g. a lawyer
- A professional expert such as a medical practitioner
- Other insurance companies
- Government departments where we need confirmation of any traffic or criminal conviction history e.g. Ministry of Justice
The general purpose for obtaining your personal information is to provide you with the insurance products and services you require.
Southsure will only use your personal information in accordance with the Information Privacy Principles set out in the Act.
Other uses of your personal information may include:
- Helping identify you when you call us so we can avoid disclosing information to a person who is not authorised to receive it
- Helping prevent or detect fraud or loss
- Contacting you about a particular service or product
- Contacting you for research or feedback purposes
We will not sell or give your personal information to other businesses or companies that are not part of the SBS Bank Group of companies.
Southsure will only disclose your personal information to a third party in accordance with the limitations set out in the Information Privacy Principles of the Privacy Act 1993, which includes:
- Where disclosure is required by law
- Where the disclosure is authorised by you
- Where the disclosure is one of the purposes for which the information was collected
To provide you with products and services and to operate our business, we may disclose your personal information to business partners, suppliers or regulators.
Where we do disclose this information, the organisations are subject to the same strict privacy rules and must only use the information for the purposes we have asked them to perform.
Examples of third parties we may disclose your information to:
Southsure maintains strict security measures in order to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
These measures include:
- Checking your identity when you call us
- Using secure passwords for our computer systems, which both protects information and limits information to those who need to use it for their work
- Storing hard copy files in secure buildings
- Completing staff training to ensure staff understand the Information Privacy Principles under the Act
Due to the nature of the internet, Southsure can never totally guarantee the security of information sent using this medium. If you have concerns about the security of an email please contact us by other means.
Southsure will take reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we collect is accurate, complete and up to date.
The Act gives you the right to correct any personal information you believe to be incorrect.
If you believe the information we hold is not accurate or up to date, please contact us. If we do not agree to correct your personal information in accordance with your request we will advise you of this and attach a note to your information that a correction was sought.
The Act gives you the right to request access to your personal information held by us. To ensure we supply the information to the correct individual, please make your request in writing.
If an agent acting on your behalf makes a request to see your personal information, it needs to be accompanied by a written authority from you authorising that agent to act on your behalf.
The Act does outline certain circumstances under which access to all or some of your personal information may be refused. In such cases, we will give you the reason for not providing that information.
You can request access to your personal information in three ways:
- privacy@southsure.co.nz
- 0800 002 002
- The Privacy Officer, Southsure Assurance Ltd, PO Box 1404, Invercargill 9810
If you want to report a suspected breach of your privacy, or you do not agree with a decision regarding access to your personal information, please contact us.
- privacy@southsure.co.nz
- 0800 002 002
- The Privacy Officer, Southsure Assurance Ltd, PO Box 1404, Invercargill 9810