Defence Service Homes (DSH Insurance)
Privacy Policy

Contents:

Privacy policy 

This Privacy Policy applies to the Defence Service Homes Insurance (also known as DSH Insurance or DSHI) ABN 97 191 187 638.

Defence Service Homes Insurance (“DSH Insurance” “we” “us” “our”) understands and appreciates that individuals (“you” “your”) may be concerned about the privacy, confidentiality and security of their personal information which is collected by DSH Insurance. This Privacy Policy covers the collection, use, disclosure and your legal rights/actions ‘you’ as a policyholder can take in regards to your personal data.

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Veterans’ Affairs

We are part of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (“DVA”) portfolio, which includes Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Australian War Memorial, Office of Australian War Graves and Veterans’ Review Board. We are responsible to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. Our General Manager is responsible for how we operate.

For more information about how the Department of Veterans’ Affairs manages personal information, please refer to the DVA Privacy Policy.

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What is our privacy commitment to you?

DSH Insurance is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of its policyholder information. Being a government insurer and administered by DVA, our purpose is to act in the best interest of our policyholders. 

We are committed to safeguarding and managing the privacy of all your information in a secure environment and consider this one of our top priorities. Our Compliance Manager oversees compliance in accordance with applicable privacy laws, insurance regulated programs and codes that we participate in, and our internal privacy policies, aligned with that of DVA. We take special care and use tools that are designed to prevent our policyholders being identifiable in our reports and insights, and we take steps to prevent data we collect being reused in ways that have not been communicated to individuals, or in ways that could negatively affect them. 

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How is Privacy Managed?

In addition to our professional and ethical commitment, DSH Insurance is bound by the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (the Privacy Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). The APPs regulate how we collect, store, use and disclose personal information. The core principles are in the Privacy Act and more information about these principles and Australian privacy law can be found on the Australian Information Commissioner’s website OAIC.

Guided by the Privacy Act, we have a sound privacy framework, supported by industry practices that comply with our legislative privacy obligations, to ensure you have the confidence that your information is safe and secure. 

This framework regulates the way we handle your personal and sensitive information and allows you to:

  • understand why your personal information is being collected, how it will be used and collected;
  • correct/incorrect information such as change of address;
  • “opt- out” of unwanted direct marketing material;
  • make a complaint regarding handling of your personal information.

DSH Insurance is committed to complying with privacy laws and managing with an open and transparent approach.

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Personal information 

The Privacy Act defines “personal information” as “Information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:

  1. whether the information or opinion is true or not: and
  2. whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.”  

Your personal information may include a broad range of information that helps us identify you as our policyholder and satisfy any regulatory requirements and support our internal verification processes. 

We may also collect details of your spouse, family members and/or other interested parties where you nominate them as the main point of contact and advise us to authorise them to act on your behalf. Record of such authorisation will be recorded on our secured database for future communications and confirmation.  

You do have the right to request to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when interacting with us. It may not always be possible or practical for this to occur—for example, when we assess your eligibility for our product, or when we are required to deal with you as an identified individual. If you request to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when dealing with us, we will advise you if this is not possible for practical reasons, for example, we cannot release your personal information to you, if we are not satisfied of your identity or where we will not be able to administer your account appropriately and/or may not be able to offer our insurance product and services.

The personal information we collect and/or hold about you and other individuals (such as a co-insured or your spouse or other nominated people) can include: 

  • name, date of birth, gender; 
  • contact details such as address, phone and email;
  • information relevant to providing a product or service such as: – underwriting information like your claims history;
  • insurance policies you have held;
  • financial institution account details like your credit card or bank account number for transactional purposes.

Obligations under the Privacy Act regarding the handling of personal information are extended to our contractors and service providers.

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How do we collect personal information?

DSH Insurance collects personal information from persons enquiring or applying for our insurance services, current policyholders, government agencies and visitors to our website.

Much of this information is collected directly from the person concerned through such as:

  • emails;
  • telephone calls;
  • website;
  • online quoting tool;
  • building cost calculator;
  • web forms; or
  • other digital platforms e.g. social media

We may also collect generic information from publically available websites (for demographic, geographic and psychographic research and analysis).

Our website includes a Privacy Statement, which deals with issues specific to the collection of information through that site. This policy should be read in conjunction with such statement.

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Why does DSH Insurance collect personal information? 

DSH Insurance collects personal information for the purposes of administering the Defence Service Homes Act 1918. We collect information about you that is necessary only for the purposes of your insurance business with us. Information collected assists us to establish policies and provide a range of products and services to our customers relating to their home building and other insurance needs. We may use this information for statistical, management and/or communications purposes. We may also disclose this information to other agencies in the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio to help with its overall management.

As this information is confidential, we know we must handle it in a secure and responsible manner. In providing this insurance protection, we may use the information about you for the purposes of:

  • assessing your application for new insurance, changing some of the information during the term of your current insurance policy, or for renewing your insurance policy;
  • providing and managing the insurance policy after we accept your application; and
  • assessing, managing and paying any claim you may make on the insurance policy.

In addition, we may use this information for marketing purposes to provide news and information about our products, services and matters that you may be interested in. We will engage in marketing unless you tell us otherwise. You can contact us at DSH Insurance to update your marketing preferences at any time.

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What happens if you decide not to provide the information we ask for?

We ask for information about you that is necessary for the purposes stated here. If you are unable to give us the information we ask for when you apply for your insurance, or at any time during the currency of your policy, we may be unable to provide you or continue to provide you with insurance cover, or to process a claim.

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Additional information when making a claim

DSH insurance may require additional information when you make a claim (for example requesting information about renovations and contractors used, previous repairs, previous claims history if pertinent to the assessment of your claim with DSH Insurance…).

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To whom do we disclose information about you

We only disclose information about you to people or organisations for the purposes outlined here. If appropriate, we may disclose information about you to, or collect it from:

  • other agencies in the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio;
  • mailing houses which we use to contact you such as Mail Chimp;
  • administration services which may help us with data management, account maintenance, documentation and settlement;
  • any person authorised by you;
  • a joint insured on your policy;
  • another party involved in a claim, such as recovering money on a claim you have made;
  • banking organisations which issue our payments or which you can use to pay us;
  • Australia Post which you can use to pay us;
  • finance provider with an interest in your insured property;
  • market research companies which help us with product development, planning, risk assessment and modelling;
  • loss assessors and building contractors who help us assess your claim;
  • legal and other professional advisers who may help us with the management of your insurance business;
  • other insurance companies and reinsurers, including the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation (ARPC), which may also help us with assessing your insurance application, underwriting your insurance, or assessing and managing any claim you may have;
  • Australian Financial Complaints Authority and other insurance industry bodies which may help resolve a dispute between us and you, or between us, you and a third party.

Unless nominated by you, we are not likely to disclose your personal information to overseas recipients.

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Holding personal information

DSH Insurance stores personal information in a variety of formats including on computer and paper based media. We implement measures to safeguard our IT systems against unauthorised access, and ensure that paper based files are physically secured. When no longer required, we destroy or archive personal information in a secure manner, where permissible under the Archives Act 1983 (Cth) (Archives Act). We also require our Service Providers to hold personal information securely.

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Communications

DSH Insurance acts in your best interests, which is integral to our business operations. We offer two main types of communications:

  • general insurance advice, where we communicate insurance relevant information;
  • direct marketing, where we promote our products and services to you. 

If you do not wish to be contacted then you can opt-out of our direct marketing by emailing us at dsh@dva.gov.au. For email communications, you can “opt-out” of receiving emails by selecting the “Unsubscribe” option, which is attached at the bottom of the email. Read more about the Privacy Statement.

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How you can access and correct your personal information

You have a right to request access to personal information we hold about you under the Privacy Act and under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth)

You also have a right to request corrections to any personal information that we hold about you if you think the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. If you ask, we must give you access to your personal information, and take reasonable steps to correct it if we consider it is incorrect, unless there is a law that allows or requires us not to. We can decline access to, or correction of, personal information under circumstances set out in the Privacy Act.

To update your personal details, get in touch with DSH Insurance customer service team via phone, 1300 552 662, or email: dsh@dva.gov.au.

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Privacy breach

From February 2018, the Privacy Act includes a new Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme which requires us to notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) of certain data breaches and recommend steps you can take to limit the impacts of a breach.

A data breach occurs when personal information that we hold is subject to unauthorised access or disclosure, or is lost.

If we believe there has been a data breach that impacts your personal information and creates a likely risk of serious harm, we will notify you as soon as practicable and keep in close contact with you about the nature of the breach, the steps we are taking and what you can do to reduce the impacts to your privacy. 

If you believe that any personal information we hold about you has been impacted by a data breach, you can contact us by filing a complaint.

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If you have a complaint

If you believe that DSH Insurance has breached the Privacy Act or mishandled your personal information, you can lodge your concerns with DSH Insurance or the OAIC. DVA will deal with each complaint on a case-by-case basis.

In the first instance, any privacy concern or complaint should be reported to DSH Insurance, by contacting our Compliance Manager:

  • POST: Compliance Manager
    Defence Service Homes Insurance Scheme
    Department of Veterans’ Affairs
    GPO Box 9998
    BRISBANE QLD 4001
  • EMAIL: dsh@dva.gov.au
  • PHONE: 1300 552 662

Please submit your concern or complaint in writing so that we can fully understand the matter and respond accordingly. We will acknowledge your correspondence upon receipt and endeavour to respond fully within 30 calendar days. We will notify you if we cannot respond within this time frame.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain directly to the OAIC:

  • POST: Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
    GPO Box 5218, SYDNEY NSW 2001
  • EMAIL: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
  • PHONE: 1300 363 992

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