Privacy Policy
This is the Privacy Policy for Cosgrove Group, a privately-owned property development and investment business that operates across Australia in the areas of property development, investment and funds management, and development advisory structuring. Cosgrove Group of companies includes Cosgrove Group Pty Ltd ACN 617 850 772, the holder of Australian financial services licence number 534974, and its associated or related entities.
This Privacy Policy applies to all entities in Cosgrove Group both in their personal capacity and in their capacity as trustee of any trusts, including any managed investment schemes operated by them from time to time (each a Fund).
In this Privacy Policy, a reference to:
“Cosgrove Group”, “we”, “us” and “our” refers to any one or more members of Cosgrove Group, including in their various capacities;
“you” or “your” refers to you as a current or prospective client, individual user of our websites or any of our services and any other individual who we deal with and about whom we may collect personal information; and
the singular includes the plural and vice versa.
About
We respect your privacy and we are committed to managing your personal information responsibly and in accordance with our legal obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act), including the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act. This Privacy Policy outlines the personal information handling practices of the Cosgrove Group.
Cosgrove Group collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information of individuals in the course of performing its functions and activities and in providing its products and services. The type and purpose for which information may be collected by us will depend on your relationship with Cosgrove Group and the circumstances in which the information is provided, such as whether you are a prospective or actual employee of Cosgrove Group, a recipient of financial services, or otherwise.
The Privacy Act regulates the way we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information. This Privacy Policy contains information on the management of personal information by Cosgrove Group, including how we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information, and the purposes for which we do so.
If you provide us with your personal information, then you agree to your information being managed by us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Anonymity
You are not required to provide us with your personal information when dealing with us. When dealing with us, you have the option of not identifying yourself or using a pseudonym. However, if you do not identify yourself to us, then we may not be able to provide you with our products or services.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We will update this Privacy Policy when our information handling practices change. The current version of our Privacy Policy can be accessed free of charge on our website or by contacting the Privacy Officer using the details set out below.
What is personal information?
Personal information is any information or opinion about an identified (or reasonably identifiable) individual, whether or not the information or opinion is true, and the information or opinion is recorded in a material form.
Personal information we collect and hold
The type of personal information we collect and hold will depend on your relationship with Cosgrove Group, and may include the following:
your full name, date of birth, contact and other details (including your residential address, e-mail address, fax and telephone number), including details of any entity through which you acquire a financial product or receive another financial service from us;
information and/or documentation to verify your identity for the purposes of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act) and/or other legislation and regulations regarding identification verification, and tax reporting and withholding;
information and/or documentation to support you qualifying as a “wholesale client” within the meaning of Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act 2001;
your tax file number (as authorised under the tax laws and the Privacy Act) and bank account details;
information that may allow us to evaluate whether to, and if we determined to do so, grant a lease or enter into agreements with you, and to manage our relationship with you as a tenant, including your rental history;
information you provide when you apply for employment at Cosgrove Group, including when providing a resume or completing new employee forms;
any correspondence between you and us; and
any other personal information you provide when you make an inquiry, request information or otherwise correspond with us.
How we collect your personal information
Unless it is unreasonable or impractical for us to do so, we will collect your personal information from you directly, including:
from application forms, such as an application form completed by you to acquire a financial product or receive other financial services from us;
through your use of our website, or any internal website or intranet, as well as any Cosgrove Group social media page (collectively, the Website);
from communications between you and our officers, employees and representatives (including communications conducted in person, over the phone, by email or otherwise); and
from promotional and marketing activities undertaken by us, in which we request or otherwise receive personal information from you (such as from competitions organised by us).
However, we may also collect information about you from third parties, such as:
your financial or other professional advisor or broker;
your authorised representatives, such as executors or administrators;
your referees, recruitment consultants, previous employers and other persons who may be able to provide information to assist in us deciding whether or not to make you an offer of employment;
outsourced service providers or contractors; and
other third parties you have authorised to provide your personal information.
How we hold your personal information
All personal information we collect will be held securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Generally personal information is stored electronically with hard copy records retained and stored securely. We will protect your personal information and prevent unauthorised access through the use of secure passwords, user logins, or other security procedures, including firewalls and anti-virus technology. All external service providers engaged by Cosgrove Group are required to hold personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act.
However, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of information transmitted to us online, as the internet is inherently insecure. Nor can we guarantee that the supply of information from you to us will not be intercepted. Information you transmit to us online is at your own risk.
We will take reasonable steps to securely destroy or de-identify personal information when it is no longer required or where we have received unsolicited personal information. However, we may be required by law to retain certain personal information for a specified period of time, after which we will securely destroy or delete the information.
Part IIIC of the Privacy Act established the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme (NDB Scheme) in Australia. The NDB Scheme sets out obligations for notifying affected individuals and the Australian Information Commissioner about a data breach which is likely to result in serious harm. Where serious harm to affected individuals is likely, we will notify those individuals and the Commissioner in accordance with our legal obligations. You may contact our Privacy Officer using the details set out below should you require additional information.
The purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information
The purposes for which we will collect, hold, use and disclose personal information from you will depend on your relationship with Cosgrove Group. Cosgrove Group primarily collects, holds, uses, and discloses personal information to:
carry on our business and to provide our products and services;
assess your application and establish and administer your investment in a Fund;
effectively operate a Fund;
verify your identity before transactions are processed, your instructions are carried out, or providing you with information about your investment, including as required to comply with our obligations under the AML/CTF Act and other legislation and regulations regarding identification verification, and tax reporting and withholding;
provide you with information about other products or services offered by Cosgrove Group;
maintain our relationship with you, including to respond to your enquiries, feedback or complaints and provide you with requested information;
assist with the administrative, marketing (including direct marketing), planning, product or service development, quality control or research purposes of us and our contractors and service providers;
assist in determining whether to make you an offer of employment or engage you under a contract, and to manage your employment or contractual arrangement on an ongoing basis;
evaluate whether to grant a lease or enter into agreements with you, and if you are a tenant, to manage the tenancy, maintain contact details and records, respond to queries or complaints, process transactions and for security and risk management purposes including incident investigation, loss prevention, claims management and litigation and to comply with any law or regulation; and
prepare internal reporting that includes identifiable customer information (for example, customer sales or marketing information, complaints or issues reporting, registry operations reporting) to satisfy any legal requirements.
Disclosure of personal information
Personal information held by a Cosgrove Group company may be disclosed to other Cosgrove Group companies for the purposes described above, as well as to third parties, depending on the nature of your relationship with Cosgrove Group. Personal information may be disclosed to:
outsourced service providers and organisations involved in the provision of, management or administration of our products or services, including in relation to the operation or administration of a Fund (such as custodians, registries, administrators, mail houses and information technology providers);
auditors, consultants and other professional advisors (including accountants and lawyers);
printers and mailing houses, information technology systems software providers, actuaries, and research organisations;
government agencies and regulatory bodies, such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Taxation Office, and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre;
financial services intermediaries, such as financial planners; and
other third parties you have authorised to receive your personal information.
Prior to disclosing any of your personal information to an unrelated person or organisation, we will take all reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that the person or organisation has a commitment to protecting your personal information at least equal to our commitment, or that you have consented to us making the disclosure.
Where Cosgrove Group contracts with an outsourced service provider, we take reasonable steps to protect the privacy of any information disclosed to them, including by requiring them to comply with the Privacy Act.
We will not disclose your personal information to overseas recipients, unless required to by law.
Use of our Website
We may use “cookies” to help us tailor our Website to better suit your needs and improve our service. Cookies are packets of information stored in your computer's memory and hard drive when you visit certain web pages. Cookies are used to enable websites to function or to provide information to the owners of a website.
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note this may interrupt your ability to use the full functionality of the Website.
We use cookies on the Website for the following purposes:
Analytical purposes - Analytical cookies allow us to recognise, measure and track visitors to the Website. This helps us improve and develop the way the Website works, for example, by determining whether site visitors can find information easily, or by identifying the aspects of the Website that are of the most interest to them. We may use analytical reports (such as those provided by Google Analytics) to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.
The Website uses Google Analytics, a service which transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the United States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.
Usage preferences - Some of the cookies on the Website are activated when visitors to our Websites make a choice about their usage of the Website. The Website then “remembers” the settings preferences of the user concerned. This allows us to tailor aspects of the Website to the individual user.
Terms and conditions - We use cookies on the Website to record when a website visitor has seen a policy, such as this one, or provided consent, such as consent to the terms and conditions on the Website. This helps to improve the user's experience of the Website – for example, it avoids a user from repeatedly being asked to consent to the same terms.
Session management - The software that runs the Website uses cookies for technical purposes needed by the internal workings of our servers. For instance, we use cookies to distribute requests among multiple servers, authenticate users and determine what features of the Website they can access, verify the origin of requests, keep track of information about a user's session and determine which options or pages to display in order for the Website to function.
Functional purposes - Functional purpose cookies store information that is needed by our applications to process and operate. For example, where transactions or requests within an application involve multiple workflow stages, cookies are used to store the information from each stage temporarily in order to facilitate completion of the overall transaction or request.
Direct marketing
We may also send you direct marketing communications and information about any other products or services offered by us that we expect may be of interest to you. These communications may be sent in various forms, including posted mail and email. You may opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us at any time by contacting the Privacy Officer using the details set out below.
Please note that, if we are currently providing you with services or products, we will still need to send you essential information about your account, the relevant services or products and other information required by law.
We will not sell your personal information nor will we provide it to third parties except as described in this Privacy Policy.
How you can access and correct your personal information held by us
You may request access to any of your personal information held by us. Your right to access is subject to some exceptions allowed by law. We will notify you of the basis for denying access to your personal information.
We will endeavour to ensure your personal information is kept accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. Please let us know if any of your details change. If you feel your personal information is not accurate, complete or up to date, then please notify us and we will take reasonable steps to ensure it is corrected.
We will consider if the information requires amendment. Generally, if the personal information held by us about you is incorrect, then we will correct it at your request. If we do not agree that there are grounds for amendment then we will add a note to the personal information stating that you disagree with it.
Please contact our Privacy Officer using the details set out below to request access to or correct any of your personal information held by us.
How can you complain about a breach of privacy?
If you have a complaint about a breach of this Privacy Policy, including the manner in which we have collected, held, used or disclosed your personal information, then you may make a complaint to us using the contact details set out below. You will need to provide us with sufficient details regarding your complaint and any supporting evidence.
Your complaint will be referred to our Privacy Officer who will investigate the issue and determine the steps we will take to resolve your complaint. We may ask you to provide additional information.
We will notify you in writing of our determination, generally within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our determination or you do not receive a response within 30 days, then you can contact us to discuss your concerns or you can refer the complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Information on making a complaint to the OAIC as available on their website at https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/.
Request a copy of this Privacy Policy and further information
A copy of our current Privacy Policy is available from us free of charge from our website. You can also request a hard copy of the Privacy Policy to be sent to you free of charge. If you would like a copy of this Privacy Policy in a particular form (for example, on audio disc), then please contact us and we will accommodate any reasonable request.
Contact us
If you have any further questions relating to this Privacy Policy, would like to request a copy of this Privacy Policy in another form, or if you have any concerns about the way in which we have handled your personal information, then please contact our Privacy Officer as follows:
by email to info@cosgrovegroup.com.au;
by post to:
Attn: Privacy Officer
Cosgrove Group
Level 25, Bligh Street
Sydney NSW 2000 Australia