Privacy Policy

1. Background

SMB Money Ltd (SMB) complies with New Zealand's Privacy Act 2020, which deals with the collection, storage, use and disclosure of personal information, and the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, New Zealand's 'anti-spam' legislation. Where personal information is provided to us, SMB maintains and uses that information in strict conformity with the Privacy Act 2020.

This privacy policy describes the information collection and sharing practices of SMB. The policy explains SMB's privacy practices in regards to individually identifiable information and personal information that is collected at this website (www.smb.nz) and during the term of any loan provided to you by SMB.

2. Purposes of Our Use and Disclosure of Your Personal Information

2.1 Current and Future Purposes of Use: Personal information is used for a number of purposes by SMB, including:

• to process your loan;

• to better understand your financial needs;

• debt collection;

• statistical analysis;

• to assess general lending risks, including the assessment of credit limits and rates of interest;

• to develop credit scoring and assessment models;

• to carry out our business;

• in order to update your records with us;

• communication between us and in order to service our relationship with you;

• to prevent money laundering and other criminal activities, and to identify and prevent fraud;

• for market research purposes;

• to identify which of our products or our partners' products might be of interest to you and to offer you both new and improved SMB products;

• to conduct regulatory checks; and

• if you consent, information about your credit information and score, how to correct, manage and improve it (provided that you acknowledge that we do not give you financial advice in this regard) and pass on any credit alerts that we receive.

2.2 Disclosure: In order to achieve some of these purposes, we may disclose your account information and monthly repayment information (including any defaults) to credit reporting agencies, which both collect and supply such information to us (at any time there is an amount outstanding) on an enduring basis, i.e. at the time of your application, at any time during the term of the Loan, and for a period of up to twelve (12) months after repayment in full. Such information sharing may include “alerts” received from any credit reporting agency in relation to a change in your circumstances, financial or otherwise, related to your ability to repay your Loan.

2.3 Credit Reporting Agency Privacy Obligations: Where applicable information is shared with these credit reporting agencies, they are obliged to observe the confidential nature of such information and are prohibited from using any or all of this information other than for the purpose for which it was provided. Such credit reporting agencies are also required to comply with the Credit Reporting Privacy Code. We will take reasonable steps to ensure recipients of this information do not breach New Zealand privacy laws in relation to the personal information we disclose, including by liaising to request correction of your personal information if necessary.

3. Consent

3.1 Consent to Sharing: By providing personal information to SMB, you are consenting to sharing that information with/from our affiliates, credit reporting agencies, lenders, customer service providers, collection agencies, and third-party companies for the purposes set out above and for the purposes of them telling you about their services or products. You also consent to sharing that information with government or regulatory or judicial authorities in order to comply with the law and/or for the purpose of fraud prevention.

3.2 Your Consent: By submitting your personal details and/or using our service, you accept this privacy policy and shall be treated as having consented to the use and disclosure of your personal information. If you object to any of the potential uses of your personal information as described below, then please do not use this website or register for any of this website's or SMB's services.

4. The Type of Information we Collect

4.1 Personal Information: SMB collects personal information from the following sources:

• your online application;

• outside sources such as credit reporting agencies and our bank verification service; and

• your on-going account management and maintenance records, including your repayment history.

4.2 Bank Verification Service: Our bank verification service allows you to authorise us to obtain copies of your most recent bank statements from the date of application, at any time during the term of your loan and for a period of six (6) months after expiry and/or termination of your loan, for the purposes of assessing your loan application, the performance of your loan and any changes to the terms of your loan, including any variation and/or application for hardship. Our authorisation to utilise the bank verification service to obtain your bank statements will be blocked from the date which is six (6) months after the date of expiry and/or termination of your loan, and we will no longer be able to obtain such information without a new authorisation from you. SMB acts solely as a data processor when using the bank verification service. Our bank verification service does not provide SMB with access to or the ability to store the login details of customers.

Where we engage an overseas bank verification service provider, we will take steps to ensure that your information is protected by the same, or higher, safeguards as provided by the Privacy Act 2020.

4.3 Cookies

(a) SMB may also collect information about your computer. This information may include your IP address, operating system and browser type. This information is collected using a small 'cookie' file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies have the potential to help us improve and enhance your service experience at SMB.

(b) If you do not want your computer to receive new cookies, you can ask your browser not to accept them. This function is possible under the 'Help' section of most browsers. If you choose to prevent cookies from being accepted, you may not be able to access some pages.

4.4 Overseas Credit Reporting Agencies: Where we engage an overseas credit reporting agency, we will take steps to ensure that your information is protected by the same, or higher, safeguards as provided by the Privacy Act 2020.

5. Additional Purpose - Disclosing Your Information to Third Parties

SMB may pass on your personal information to selected third parties only in limited circumstances as set out below. These third parties may use your personal information to contact you by email, telephone, post, SMS or other reasonable means.

We may disclose your personal information to a third party if:

• we have a duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with a legal request;

• we have a duty to disclose your personal information in order to enforce any of our terms of use;

• our business or a substantial amount of its assets are acquired by a third party (in which case personal information held about those who have registered with SMB, used this website or our services will be one of the transferred assets);

• we decide to buy any business or assets (in which case we may disclose your personal information to the seller of any such business or assets); or

• we decide to sell any business or assets (in which case we may disclose your personal information to the buyer of any such business or assets).

6. Limiting Use of Personal Information

6.1 Opt Out: SMB complies strictly with New Zealand's Privacy Act 2020 which, in part, deals with the holding and use of personal information. In line with the Privacy Act 2020, SMB ensures that you must consent to receiving marketing information, and you may opt out of our use of your personal information for marketing purposes at any time by sending us an email to privacy@smb.nz. If you opt out of our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, we will do our utmost to respect this request once we have had a reasonable opportunity to process your request.

6.2 Storage and Correction: SMB is required to store your information securely and to allow you easy access to check and correct your information. We will try to ensure that all information we collect, use or disclose about you in accordance with this privacy policy is accurate, complete and up to date. We expect that you will promptly notify us of any changes or corrections to your personal information.

6.3 Data Breach Reporting: We will comply with the mandatory data breach reporting regime under the Privacy Act 2020, which will require us to notify the Privacy Commissioner and you if any data breach causes or is likely to cause serious harm to you.

6.4 Marketing Contact from SMB and Third Parties: You understand and agree by submitting an application to us, that we may contact you from time to time (including at any time after your loan has expired) at your email address, SMS, postal address, phone number, mobile number, fax or by other electronic means to help manage your loan, for marketing purposes, for market research or to discuss other products and services offered by SMB or other companies that we believe may interest you.

7. Access to Products, Facilities and/or Services

If you choose not to provide all the information requested on an application form, SMB may choose to decline your application and otherwise restrict the products, facilities and/or services available to you.

8. Use of Emails

You will receive emails from SMB if you submit an SMB online loan application.

9. Third Party Links

Our site may contain links to third-party websites. If you choose to follow a link to any such websites, please note that they are not subject to our terms of use. Third-party websites may have their own privacy policies, disclaimers and terms of use. SMB does not accept any responsibility or liability for third-party websites and their services.

10. How to Contact SMB

If you would like to access, correct or delete any of your personal information that we hold about you or would like to contact us with any queries or comments, please find us at privacy@smb.nz.

SMB's privacy policy applies to all current and former customers of SMB and visitors to this website. The information, material and content provided in the pages of this website may be changed at any time with or without notice, including this privacy policy.

Any revision to this privacy policy shall take effect as at the date when the change is made to the website. Your continued access to or use of this website will indicate that you consent to any changes in our privacy policy.