Privacy Policy

Our privacy commitment

MyBudget is committed to protecting your privacy. We adhere to this privacy policy to keep your personal information secure and confidential. We are bound by the Privacy Act 2020 (NZ) (Privacy Act) and other legislation surrounding the collection, holding use and disclosure of your personal information. Personal information is information about an identifiable individual (a natural person).

This privacy policy deals with the personal information of our clients and prospective clients, and of service providers, creditors and other third parties.

This privacy policy outlines the personal information we may collect from you, as well as how and why we collect it. It also shows how we keep this information secure and how we may use and disclose it. The privacy policy applies to all of your dealings and interactions with us – in person, online, over the phone, or by post.

References to ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘MyBudget’ in this document refer to MyBudget New Zealand Ltd. For information on how to contact MyBudget, please see ‘Contacting us’ below.

Updates to our privacy policy

We may update this privacy policy by uploading the update policy to our website www.mybudget.co.nz. The updated privacy policy will apply from the date that it is available from our website. You can contact a MyBudget representative for a current policy, using the contact details above. Alternatively, please check our website.

How we collect information

We collect your personal information directly from you, when you:

Provide us with information by phone or video conference;
Interact with us via email, the internet, our web-chat services or a mobile app;
Request to receive the services offered and provided by us;
Submit an enquiry, complaint or feedback to us, including via our website;
Create a client login on our website;
Attend a face-to-face interview or appointment with us;
Provide us with information through a data collection form, including on our website;
Submit documentation and forms to us;
Apply for a contractor or employment position with us;

Where you otherwise submit personal information about yourself, or someone else, to us, or our website.We may also collect personal information about you indirectly, but only where permitted by law including where you give us consent to do so or where that would not prejudice your interests.

If you are a MyBudget client we collect personal information about you indirectly from your creditors and service providers, for any of the following purposes:

To support us to negotiate, review, vary, or administer payment agreements and arrangements.
To confirm account details, balances, payment amounts, interest, fees, or arrears.
To receive confirmation of whether proposed payment arrangements have been accepted, rejected, or implemented.
To administer your Budget Plan and to manage and make payments on your behalf.
To assist us in administering your Budget Plan, managing payments, and communicating with you about your financial commitments.
Where you are a creditor or service provider, and a client provides us with your details for the purposes above.

In addition, if you are a MyBudget client we may collect personal information about you indirectly for the purpose of complying with our obligations under anti-money laundering law including to verify documents and information you provide. We may collect that information from government agencies and service providers.

If someone other than you provides us with personal information about you that we did not ask for, or you provide us with unsolicited personal information, we will only hold, use or disclose this information if we determine that we could have collected this information from you had we asked for it. In this circumstance, we will take all reasonable steps to notify you of the collection of that information. If we could not have collected this personal information, we will lawfully de-identify or destroy that personal information.

Where you decline to provide us with personal information or refuse us authorisation to collect information from a third party, this may affect our actions in setting up and managing your budget or creditor payment arrangements, or otherwise providing you with our services, and your level of service may be diminished or we may not be able to provide our services at all.

You may choose to contact us anonymously or using a pseudonym where it is lawful and practicable to do so, for example, if you telephone us requesting our postal address. You will also be able to use our public website anonymously. However, if you do not identify yourself, we will only be able to give you general information and we may not be able to provide the full services you need.

Please note that all calls between clients and us or our contact centre are monitored and recorded for our records, as well as for training, coaching, evaluation and quality purposes. We also collect audio-visual recordings of all budget consultation appointments for these purposes.

What kind of information we collect

We collect only relevant information about you that is needed to establish and maintain your account and services, or as otherwise necessary to conduct our business, as the law allows and/or requires us to collect. We may collect personal and financial information about you that is not publicly available and information that you otherwise submit to us, including via our website www.mybudget.co.nz, to our staff or via forms that you provide to us. The information we collect varies depending on the accounts and services you request or use.

We are likely to collect personal information, such as your contact details and other identifying information, necessary for our business dealings with you. We may also collect the following personal information from you:

your name and date of birth;
your email address, postal/residential address, telephone number;
how you heard about MyBudget;
your NZ residency status, for example, citizen, permanent resident, working visa, student visa;
identity documentation, such as a copy of your driver’s licence, for identity verification purposes, for the purpose of complying with our obligations under Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009;
your current financial status, credit history;
your relationship status and how many dependants you have;
your employment status, employer and other such information;
financial information, including details about your income (including employment contracts or pay slips), expenditure (including bank statements, bills and mortgage or rental payments), debts, credit limits and your balances owing for credit products, bank accounts and payment details and any powers of attorney provided;
with respect to your creditors, balances outstanding, payment status, arrears details, fees, interest, and penalties.
information relating to your financial goals and concerns.

Please be advised that if you provide inaccurate or incomplete information, we may not be able to provide you with the products or services you are seeking.

How we may use personal information – General

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was given to us, or for purposes that are directly related to the provision of our services. Your personal information may be used by us for a number of purposes, including:

To assist you in conveniently and easily accessing the services that we offer and provide, including locating your closest physical MyBudget office and offering appointments with us;
To be able to improve the services we offer, including providing staff with feedback and training;
For internal record-keeping in relation to the service we provide to you;
For marketing research purposes;
To periodically send surveys and communications about our services or other information which we consider that you may find interesting;
To manage and resolve any complaints and to otherwise defend, protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests;
If you are a creditor, to contact you to obtain credit information in relation to our clients; and
If you are a contractor or job applicant, to assess your application to work with us
For any other purpose authorised by you or the Privacy Act.

How we may collect and use personal information – where you are a client or a prospective client

We need to collect certain personal information so that we can identify and contact you appropriately. We will use your personal information to assess your suitability for the services we provide, potentially conduct appointments with you and provide you with any further relevant services (which may include a budget plan).

In addition to the potential uses noted above (under “How we may use personal information – General”), if you are a client or potential client the information you provide to us, or which we otherwise collect about you, will be used for the following purposes:

Primarily to provide our services to you including to set up and manage your account and deal with lenders and other creditors on your behalf.
To tailor your budget to your needs, make arrangements with creditors, and provide you with the service you require. To comply with our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 and to comply with (and to exercise our rights under) the Unclaimed Money Act 1971 (if we owe you any unclaimed money).

Much of your information would be provided for a specific purpose, and in that case, it would be used primarily for that purpose. For example, any of your payment details or bank account details which you provide so that we can make bill payments on your behalf would be used exclusively to make bill payments, and for no other purpose.

From time to time we may also use the information gathered from you to perform statistical and demographic analyses of our client base so that we can improve our services and match our business model to our clients’ needs.

How we may disclose your information

We may disclose your personal information outside of MyBudget including:

To our related entities in the MyBudget group of companies, including MyBudget Pty Ltd;
If you are part of a joint client, to other persons who make up that joint client;
Your employer, in relation to arranging for your salary or wage to be credit to a trust account we operate;
Your professional advisors, including your solicitor or accountant, as authorised by you;
Our external service providers and other third parties that assist us to provide our services to you, including technology support providers and data storage providers;
Your lenders and other creditors, and debt collection agencies, in relation to assisting to make arrangements with them on your behalf;
Government and regulatory authorities and other organisations, to comply with our obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009;
The Inland Revenue Department, in connection with any money that you have not claimed, in relation to our obligations and rights under the Unclaimed Money Act 1971;
Lawyers and other professionals, and our insurers (and their advisers), in connection with defending, protecting and/or enforcing our legal rights & interests including for in connection with resolving complaints or disputes, including beyond the end of your contract;
Third parties for the purpose of securing credit on your behalf, as authorised by you;
Relevant authorities, if we have reason to believe that you or another person is in danger.

We may also disclose your personal information to anyone authorised by you or where permitted by the Privacy Act).

We may need to transfer some of your information overseas if we are making an arrangement with an overseas creditor on your behalf. The information we may transfer includes your identifying details, such as name, date of birth and address; details of other payments you are required to make; and information about changes in your personal and financial situation, only to the extent necessary to make the payment arrangement.

Accordingly, MyBudget is likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients. Although it is not practicable to specify all countries where such overseas recipients are located, particularly where they are your overseas creditors, MyBudget does frequently deal with service providers located in Australia, the United States of America, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. Where countries do not have privacy laws at least comparable to the Act, we take steps we consider are reasonable to ensure the relevant service providers protect the information in a way that, overall, provides comparable safeguards to those in the Act.

Direct Marketing

Where appropriate your information may be used to advise you of products or services we offer that we believe might suit your needs. This may include utilising your email address to send you emails or targeted online advertising. You authorise us to use any email address or other contact information you provide to us at any time for such above purposes. If at any stage you wish to stop receiving direct marketing material, you may contact us with this request. We maintain a register for those individuals who do not wish to receive marketing material.

Please contact us if you wish to unsubscribe from all marketing communications by email to [email protected]. You agree and acknowledge that even if you opt out of receiving information about future events or marketing material, we will still send you certain essential information relating to the services we provide to you

Keeping your information up to date

MyBudget takes reasonable precautions to ensure that the personal information we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up to date. To ensure that we are able to maintain this level of accuracy and completeness, we ask that you:

Inform us of any errors in your personal information as soon as possible; and
Update us with any changes to your personal information as soon as possible.

Keeping your private information secure

MyBudget is committed to keeping your personal information secure and confidential. We use all reasonable endeavours to keep your information in a secure environment and to protect your personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. If you reasonably believe that there has been unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information please contact us using the details below.

Accessing your information and requesting corrections

You have a right to access your personal informationand to request correction of that personal information, subject to certain exceptions allowed by law. We ask that you provide your request for access using the contact details set out below under “Contacting us”.

Our website security

We use multiple levels of security to protect the information you provide us online.

On our website you may access certain site information without revealing your personal identity, however we utilise cookies to provide you with a better user experience. Cookies are small pieces of information that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser. Cookies enable us to recognise your browser and capture and remember certain information. Most browsers allow you to disable cookies. Please refer to the help menu on your browser for more information. Be aware that disabling and blocking cookies may impact the functionality of the service we provide.

We use first-party cookies and third-party cookies to help us compile and monitor aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction. This will allow us to offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers may use the information collected on our behalf to help us conduct and improve our business.

Anonymous analytical information such as gender and age brackets may be collected when you browse our website.

Third-party vendors show our ads on websites and may serve these ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website (for example, through remarketing to site visitors who have not made contact with us, limiting marketing which existing clients receive, or remarketing to a visitor who has made an enquiry but not attended an appointment with us). We may also use this data to optimise our ad campaigns based on your prior visits to our website. You may opt out of the use of cookies by visiting the advertising opt-out page (https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin). You may opt out of our use of Analytics by visiting the Analytics opt-out browser add-on (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout).

On our mobile app and members’ website, you may access your existing budget, and you may communicate with us via web message. The application information we accept online relies on industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to secure your transaction information and communication. MyBudget’s computer system uses software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing which information is of most and least interest to members, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

Staying secure online

Your online security relies on our actions and your actions. We will do everything we can to protect your privacy, but there are also measures that you can take. Here are some tips to help you maximise your online security:

Make sure you regularly use and update an anti-virus program, a firewall, and an anti-spyware program. Using these products for your security will help to protect your computer and your personal information.
It is important to protect your login details and password for our members website and mobile application. Pick a password that will not be easily guessed by anyone else. We recommend using a unique password which is not used for any other account or application you use. combination of lower and uppercase letters, symbols and numbers for maximum security.
Passphrases are the more secure version of passwords and made up of four or more random words making them longer than a traditional password. This makes them harder to guess but easy to remember. Changing your passwords to a passphrase is a great way to improve your cyber security.
Memorise your password and destroy any documents that show your login details. If you do choose to keep a written copy of your login details and password, do not keep the information where it may be easily accessed by others. Should you forget your online password, you may contact MyBudget using the contact details below. A representative will only be able to reset your password after verifying your identity using a series of security questions.
If you believe your online security has been breached, please contact MyBudget straight away.

Contacting us

You can contact us by phone or by email, using the below details:

Phone number: 09 849 6285

Email: [email protected]

For general and customer service-related enquiries, our phones are open from 9:30am to 8:30pm Monday to Friday. MyBudget is closed on national public holidays.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, you can email [email protected]. Existing clients can also send online messages through our secure client site.