Privacy Statement
1. Our Privacy Statement
This Statement sets out how and when the Debtfix Foundation (“Foundation”, “Debtfix”, “we”, “us” or “our”) collects, holds, uses and discloses your personal information. This Statement does not limit or exclude any of your rights under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (“Privacy Act”).
By using our website, contacting us directly or accepting services from us, you consent to our handling of your personal information in accordance with this Statement. We may modify or amend this Statement from time to time.
All personal information retained by Debtfix Limited before 1 July 2022 was transferred to the Foundation following the sale of Debtfix Limited’s business and assets to the Foundation. The transfer was made on a lawful basis under the Privacy Act 2020.
2. Collection of your Information
We collect personal information from you when you provide information to us directly, for example, by you sending us an email enquiring about information relating to us or our products or services, via telephone or through your use of our website and the services and functionality offered through it, and when you obtain services from us. For the reasons denoted in paragraph 3 below, we may also collect personal information about you from third parties and from other public sources (denoted below) where authorised by you.
The personal information we may collect may include your name & contact details and information about your:
o financial affairs & personal circumstances.
o computer or network that you use.
o interactions with us.
3. Reasons for Collection
We collect your personal information in order to:
provide products and services to you and to improve the products and services we offer.
respond to your queries.
verify who you are.
carry out credit checks.
to bill you and to collect money that you owe us.
provide you with personalised advice.
keep you informed of the services and solutions that we offer.
provide news about our services and solutions, together with issues and news related to them.
to protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests, including defending any claim.
provide and improve our website.
conduct research, data and statistical analysis.
help with the delivery of education and training around financial awareness, literacy and wellbeing.
participate in academic research in conjunction with third parties on an anonymised basis.
4. Sharing of your information
Besides our staff, we share this information:
with any business that assists us to provide services and solutions;
with third parties to facilitate the transfer of your information, but only if you specifically authorise us to do so;
with credit reference agencies for the purpose of carrying out credit checks;
with our information technology providers and other service providers where necessary to transmit, store, or process the information, subject to the safeguards described in section 8;
where the disclosure is in connection with one of the purposes for which the information was collected, and to enable us to provide the service and solutions that we provide to you;
where we are required or authorised by law to make disclosure;
with any other person authorised by you;
with any organisation solely, or in conjunction with us, undertaking research in the field of financial literacy, financial wellbeing, problem debt, effectiveness of debt advice and debt solutions or anything related thereto, but only anonymised data will be provided in those circumstances.
5. Retention and Security
We will not hold your personal information for longer than is required for the purpose(s) for which it was collected (subject to any obligations at law to hold the information for longer periods).
If we have provided you with personalised debt solution advice, then we are legally required to retain your details and information relating to our advice, for a minimum period of seven years from the time when our on-going relationship with you ceases.
Where we are appointed as Supervisor of a Debt Repayment Order, we may be required to hold your recordsndefinitely as required by the Official Assignee.
We will use our reasonable endeavours to implement security safeguards of an industry standard to protect the information that you have provided us, and we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the information will not be disclosed to any unauthorised person or organisation.
Security measures that we employ include:
Encryption tools;
Security software;
Anti-virus and phishing software; and
Back up processes.
6. Your right of access and to correction
We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information held by us is accurate and up-to-date. You are entitled to obtain from us confirmation as to whether we hold personal information about you and you are entitled to reasonable access to this information, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong.
If you’d like to ask for a copy of your information and have it corrected, or would like to be removed from any of our subscription lists at any time, then please contact us at compliance@debtfix.co.nz or by letter to 20 Florence Avenue, Orewa, New Zealand, 0931.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your personal information, or with our response to a request under this section, you may make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz.
7. How we use AI
When you use our online assessment tools, we may use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help analyse your responses, extract information from documents you submit, ask relevant follow-up questions, and prepare draft summaries or assessments. AI tools only assist our team.
Every assessment, advice document, recommendation, or other output is reviewed, verified, and finalised by a qualified team member before it is provided to you. No final legal, financial, or service decision is made solely by automated processing.
We contractually prohibit our AI service providers from using your personal or financial information to train, tune, or improve their public or proprietary AI models. Your information is processed securely, and temporary processing logs held by AI service providers are automatically deleted within 30 days. You may request to complete your assessment without AI assistance at any time by contacting us. Where our AI service providers store or process information outside New Zealand, this is subject to the same overseas-disclosure safeguards described in section 8 (External Data Processors) below.
8. External Data Processors
We use third-party service providers, including cloud hosts, online-form providers, customer relationship management platforms, analytics providers, and AI service infrastructure, to process personal information on our behalf.
Some providers are located outside New Zealand, including in Australia and the United States. Where an overseas provider acts solely as our agent for storage or processing and does not use or disclose the information for its own purposes, we remain responsible for that information under the Privacy Act 2020.
Where a transfer is a disclosure to an overseas recipient, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the transfer is permitted under Information Privacy Principle 12, including by establishing contractual or other safeguards that provide protections comparable to those under the Privacy Act 2020, or by obtaining express authorisation after giving the information required by law. These providers may process personal information only on our instructions and for the purposes described in this Statement.
We require third-party service providers to maintain reasonable technical and organisational safeguards appropriate to the personal information they process. Before personal information is disclosed to an overseas recipient, we assess the applicable privacy protections and put in place contractual or other safeguards where required. We also monitor our service arrangements and take reasonable steps to address any material change that could affect the protection of your personal information.