Credit Reporting Policy

This Policy is effective from 3 September 2025. We’ll update this Policy from time to time, and the latest version will always be available here.

• 1. Introduction

  This Credit Reporting Policy applies Branded Financial Pty Limited, (ABN 27 004 013 334, ACN 004 013 334, and Australian Credit Licence 39218) and its related Companies including:

  • Avanti Finance Limited and its related subsidiary Companies referred to as 'us', 'we', 'our', and ‘BFS’.

  BFS is committed to collecting, using, storing, and disclosing credit related information in accordance with the Privacy (Credit Reporting) Code (CR Code) and Part IIIA of the Privacy Act 1998 (Cth) (Privacy Act).

  This policy describes how we manage your credit related information and comply with our credit reporting obligations in the Privacy Act and the CR Code.

  In this policy “credit related information” means credit information, credit eligibility information, Credit Providers (CP) and Credit Reporting Body (“CRB”) derived information as defined in the Privacy Act.

  Credit eligibility information is the information that CRB’s provide to us.

  CP derived information means any information that is derived from information provided to us by a CRB. This could be, for instance, a credit score.

  “Credit information” also includes information used to identify an individual, repayment history, types of credit applied for, default information, payment information, information about new payment arrangements, court proceedings and insolvencies, and publicly available information recorded on the National Personal Insolvency Index.

• 2. Information in our Credit Reporting Policy and Privacy Policy

  This Credit Reporting Policy should be read in conjunction with:

  • Our Statement of Notifiable Matters
  • Our Privacy Policy
  • Our Privacy Disclosure Statement and Consent
  • Any privacy collection notice that we may provide to you
• 3. Credit-related information we collect from Credit Reporting Bodies

  We may collect your credit-related information from CRB’s such as Equifax Australian Group Pty Ltd, Experian Australia Credit Services Pty Ltd, and any other credit providers that have provided credit to you.

  We may collect the following types of credit-related information about you:

  • identification information such as your full name (and any other previous names you have been known by), date of birth, residential, business and postal addresses, telephone numbers, email and other electronic addresses, driver licence details, passport details and other alternative identification methods (for example, photo identification card or other Government issued identification documentation/methods).
  • information about credit arrangements you have entered into, and whether the terms of these arrangements have been varied;
  • information about credit applications you have made, and whether information about you has been sought from credit reporting bodies;
  • information about overdue payments and default listings;
  • information about subsequent payments made (including the fact that any overdue payments are no longer overdue or a default is remedied);
  • publicly available information related to your creditworthiness (including bankruptcy information on the National Personal Insolvency Index and information about credit-related court judgments against you); and
  • whether you have committed a serious credit infringement (that is, acted fraudulently or shown an intention not to comply with your credit obligations).

  If you apply for a product with BFS, we may request credit reports from a CRB. BFS may request such reports for consumer credit or commercial credit applications.

  These credit reports contain information which assists us in assessing your application, including information about your credit history with other credit providers. CRB’s can provide credit providers with credit reports in certain circumstances, including when an individual makes an application for credit, or when a credit provider is seeking to help an individual avoid defaulting on their credit. Credit reports are designed to assist credit providers to accurately assess an individual’s ability to repay credit.

  When requesting a report, BFS will tell the CRB that you have made an application and the type and amount of credit you are applying for – this information is referred to as an information request.

  Only if required by the Privacy Act, BFS will seek your consent to conduct a credit check prior to obtaining credit-related information about you from a credit reporting body. However, if you do not provide us with this information or consent to a credit check (where required) we may be unable to process your application for credit or provide finance to you.

  An information request will appear on your credit report and may be used by the credit reporting agency or other credit providers to assess your credit worthiness, including when you make subsequent applications for credit. Information requests on your credit report can affect your credit score depending on the amount and type of credit you are applying for, frequency of information requests appearing on your credit report and your credit history.

• 4. How we collect your credit-related information from other parties

  We may obtain credit-related information in a number of ways, including:

  • Avanti Finance Limited and its related subsidiary Companies;
  • from customers when they apply for or use our credit related products or services;
  • joint credit applicants or co-borrowers;
  • guarantors;
  • Credit Reporting Bodies (CRBs);
  • other Credit Providers (CPs);
  • from agents, introducers and representatives such as brokers or aggregators who referred you or introduced to us;
  • from car dealerships who referred to you or introduced to us;
  • law enforcement agencies and other government entities;
  • to our service providers and advisors so they can perform their services for us, such as IT, our funding arrangements, debt collection, legal, accounting, auditing; and
  • from publicly available sources of information (sources, including the National Personal Insolvency Index)

  We may also collect credit-related information by other means and will take all reasonable steps to inform you if and when we do.

• 5. How we hold your credit-related information

  The credit-related information we hold about you may be stored on our loan origination and management platform. The data is encrypted at rest and is hosted in Australia. All information transmitted is encrypted. HTTPS is used for communication with third-party systems, and payloads are encrypted across all loan origination and management platform modules to ensure data security.

  We maintain strict procedures and standards and take all reasonable care to prevent unauthorised access to, and modification and disclosure of, your credit-related information.

  We take all reasonable care to protect any credit-related information we hold against misuse or loss.

• 6. How we use your credit-related information

  BFS will use your credit-related information for the purpose for which it was collected, or for internal management purposes directly linked to that purpose and as permitted as law. In particular, we collect, hold, use and disclose your credit-related information in order to provide you, or a prospective customer (or nominated guarantor) depending on the circumstances and the nature products and services, and to:

  • assess your credit worthiness and eligibility for credit, including creating and using our own assessments , ratings, and scorecards in respect of your credit worthiness;
  • deciding whether to provide a product or service requested or applied for, including verifying your credit history, evaluating your credit worthiness, or deciding whether to accept you as a guarantor (if applicable);
  • process your application and manage any credit that we provide to you (assisting customers in meeting their credit related obligations);
  • ongoing monitoring of creditworthiness, your payments and any defaults;
  • detecting and preventing instances of fraud and credit loss, unlawful conduct;
  • for risk management purposes e.g. to manage financial and other risks for our business and you or our products and services;
  • providing other related products or services to you, by us and/or relevant and trusted third parties;
  • responding to certain enquiries relating to any other credit-related policy offered by a third-party service provider in connection with our products or services;
  • ensuring fast and accurate approval and processing of applications and requests;
  • dispute and complaint resolution, and assisting other credit providers to do the same;
  • enforcing our rights, including the collection of outstanding payments and, where necessary, initiating legal proceedings;
  • complying with our obligations, including ongoing participation in the credit reporting system by providing Credit Information to credit reporting agencies – (information disclosed by us to credit reporting agencies may be listed in their systems, used by them to provide their credit reporting services or other information services, and supplied to their customers on an ongoing basis in line with Part IIIA of the Privacy Act and Credit Reporting Code);
  • dealing with serious credit infringements and assisting other credit providers to do the same;
  • undertake debt recovery and enforce activities including in relation to guarantors and deal with serious credit infringements;
  • verifying your identity as may be required from time to time by AML/CFT Legislation;
  • providing your behavioural biometric data to a third party for the purposes of digital identity protection and fraud prevention;
  • verifying your identity using electronic sources. To do so, we’ll ask you for your details (such as your name, address and date of birth) and details of your identification documents, which will be passed to external organisations to electronically match your information with identification data on their databases;
  • complying with Australian Laws and regulations that may specifically require us to collect your Personal Information and any overseas laws where collecting your information is necessary for us to comply with our obligations;
  • sharing Personal Information with law enforcement agencies where we reasonably believe it’s necessary to comply with the law or to assist in the prevention, detection or investigation of fraud, money laundering or other criminal offences;
  • assisting us in managing our businesses, undertaking review and maintenance of our systems and infrastructure, complying with our internal operational requirements, such as for credit management, product or credit assessment processes or system development and planning, insurance, audit and administration purposes;
  • improving the quality of and ensuring the safety of our websites, portals and applications (where applicable) and of the services provided;
  • identifying you and your device so that we can make our services available to you;
  • customer data analytics, which may be provided to or shared with third parties which we have an alliance, partnership or arrangement with;
  • improving the products and services we provide you. This may include, for example, using Personal Information, including transaction data, to obtain customer insights and monitor customer trends;
  • undertaking research and development regarding potential future products and services; and
  • compiling statistical data, e.g. credit scoring information; for training, quality control and verification.
• 7. Disclosure to Credit Reporting Bodies (CRB's)

  We may, as permitted by the Privacy Act and the CR Code, disclose personal information about you in connection with your credit applications or other credit-related interactions with us to CRB’s. This is referred to as Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) data.

  Those CRB’s may then include that information in reports that they provide to other credit providers to assist them to assess your credit worthiness and to report any default (only where we have provided you with notice as required by the Privacy Act).

  For example, the types of credit-related information we may share with credit reporting bodies include the following:

  • identification information (e.g. your name, address, date of birth, employer and drivers' licence number);
  • information about your overdue payments (provided that we first notified you as required by the Privacy Act);
  • if you commit a serious credit infringement in relation to credit provided by us; and
  • information about subsequent payments you have made.

  We disclose information to the following credit reporting bodies:
  
  Experian Public Access Centre (Experian)

  Website:	www.experian.com.au
  Phone:	1300 783 684 (9am-4pm Monday to Friday)
  Email:
  Address:	C/O illion, PO BOX 7405 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3004

  
  

  Equifax

  Website:	www.equifax.com.au
  Phone:	138 332
  Address:	PO Box 964, North Sydney, NSW 2059

  
  

  A credit reporting body is required to have a policy explaining how they will manage your credit-related personal information. To view the policies, visit the relevant website.

  Excluding your credit reporting information from pre-screening for direct marketing:

  You have a right to request that a credit reporting body exclude your credit reporting information from being used by them for direct marketing-related pre-screenings requested by credit providers. You should contact a relevant credit reporting body directly if you wish to request this.

  Protecting your credit reporting information if you become the victim of fraud:

  You have a right to request that a credit reporting body not use or disclose your credit reporting information if you believe that you have been, or are likely to be, the victim of fraud (for example, if you think that someone is misusing your identity to apply for credit). You should contact a relevant credit reporting body directly if you wish to request this.

• 8. Disclosure to other parties

  We may also disclose your credit-related information:

  • to Avanti Finance Limited and related entities;
  • to our partners and service providers (for example those who provide marketing services, data analytics services, IT services, market research services, back-office management services or customer acquisition and onboarding services), including introducers such as car dealerships and brokers;
  • to dealers and brokers who introduce your loans to us, help us manage your accounts including any arrears you may experience;
  • to debt collection agencies for the purposes of recovering debts you owe to us;
  • to any third parties who acquire any rights or interests in any amounts or debts that you owe to us (including if we assign, transfer or novate your agreement with us);
  • to other Australian credit providers if we reasonably believe that you have committed a serious credit infringement;
  • to external dispute resolution schemes that we are a member of (including the Australian Financial Complaints Authority);
  • to our legal and financial advisors;
  • third parties for securitisation purposes such as selling loan obligations;
  • to our funders and investors;
  • fraud investigations; and
  • for other purposes, as required or authorised by law;
  • other relevant authorities or third parties if we are authorised or required by law or otherwise permitted under the Privacy Act, such as to comply with mandatory reporting requirements in relation to suspected cases of domestic violence or abuse; or to lessen or prevent a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any individual, or to public health or safety; and
  • where you otherwise provide express consent.
• 9. Overseas disclosure

  To assess your finance enquiry and to administer the financial services that we can offer you, we may disclose your credit-related information to overseas entities outside of Australia. These entities include our related entities and service providers located in New Zealand .

  We may also do credit checks in New Zealand for people who used to reside in New Zealand but have moved to Australia recently.

  Where we do so, we ensure that the disclosure of and access to that information is secure and appropriate controls are in place.

• 10. Your rights in relation to your credit-related information

  Accessing or correcting your personal information or making a privacy complaint:

  You have rights to request access to, or correction of personal information that we hold about you, including credit-related information. Where we do not provide you with access or your correction request, we will tell you why.

  You also have the right to make a complaint if you consider that we have not complied with the Privacy Act or CR Code in relation to your information. Our Privacy Policy and this Credit Reporting Policy sets out how you can make such requests or complaints and how we deal with them.

  For details about the management of credit-related personal information (including credit reporting information) that we hold about you, please see our Privacy Policy and this Credit Related Policy.

• 11. Complaints

  If you have any questions about this policy and/or a concern or complaint about the way we have handled our obligations relating to consumer credit information under Part IIIA of the Privacy Act and Credit Reporting code, please contact us using the details below:

  Email:
  Phone:	1300 549 166
  Post:	Branded Financial Services Pty Ltd Attention: Privacy Officer Level 1, 20 Hunter Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

  We will endeavour to contact you within (7) days of you making your complaint acknowledging receipt of your complaint. It is our policy to investigate and resolve all complaints (where practicable) within 21 days (if your complaint is in relation to default notices, hardship or enforcement proceedings), or within 30 days (in relation to other complaints about credit-related information).

  Where it is a legal requirement to do so, then if we need more time to investigate and resolve your complaint, we will notify you as to the reasons why and seek your agreement to extend this thirty (30) day period (if you do not agree, we may then not be able to resolve your complaint).

  Please note that where your complaint relates to your credit information, we may consult with a credit reporting body or other credit provider in order to investigate and resolve your complaint. Depending on the type of complaint, it may also be necessary for us to consult with other third parties.

  If you are not satisfied with the outcome, you may wish to lodge a complaint with the external dispute resolution scheme provider or The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”).

  Website:	www.oaic.gov.au
  Phone:	1300 363 992
  Address:	GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia Phone: 1300 363 992 Fax: +61 2 9284 9666

  The Australian Financial Complaints Authority ("AFCA") provides fair and independent financial services complaint resolution that is free to consumers

  Website:	www.afca.org.au
  Email:
  Phone:	1800 931 678 (free call)
  Address:	Australian Financial Complaints Authority GPO Box 3 Melbourne VIC 3001

• 12. Changes to this policy

  BFS reserves the right to vary this policy from time to time. If we change the policy, we will post the revised policy as soon as it is completed on our website. We encourage you to periodically review our policy for any changes.

• 13. Contact us

  If you have any questions regarding this statement or would like more information about the way we manage your credit-related information, please contact us by using the details below:

  Email:
  Post:	Branded Financial Services Ltd Attention: Privacy Officer Level 1, 20 Hunter Street, Sydney, NSW 2000