Legal
Privacy Policy
Arthr is built on trust with your most sensitive financial information. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and the rights you have — in line with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).
1Who we are
This policy applies to arthr pty ltd (ABN 39 697 205 486, ACN 697 205 486) of 518 Old South Head Road, Rose Bay NSW 2029 (“Arthr”, “we”, “us” or “our”).
Arthr is an authorised credit representative of 1st Street Pty Ltd trading as 1st Street Financial (ABN 29 101 256 348), the holder of Australian Credit Licence 389328. We provide credit assistance under that licence. 1st Street is a related party for the purposes of this policy, and the credit provider (lender) you ultimately deal with will handle your information under its own privacy and credit reporting policies.
We use third-party service providers to operate our website and the “Ask Arthr” assistant, including Brokermate Australia Pty Ltd, which provides the technology platform that powers our intake and chat experience.
2About this policy
“Personal information” means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, as defined in the Privacy Act. This policy covers personal information we collect across all of our channels — our website, the Ask Arthr assistant, our portal, by phone, by email, by messaging services such as WhatsApp, and through our service providers and partners.
By using our website or the Ask Arthr assistant, providing us with your information, or otherwise engaging our services, you consent to your personal information being collected, used and disclosed as set out in this policy.
This is a privacy policy, not financial or credit advice.
Information and estimates provided through our website or the Ask Arthr assistant are general in nature and indicative only. They do not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and are not credit advice, a credit assessment, or an offer of credit. Your use of our services is also governed by our Terms of Use.
3Dealing with us anonymously
You can browse our website, use our calculators, and ask general questions without telling us who you are. However, to provide a loan enquiry, a personalised assessment, or credit assistance, we need to identify you — it is not practicable for us to deal with you anonymously or under a pseudonym for those purposes.
4Information we collect
The personal information we collect may include:
- Identity and contact details — your name, date of birth, email address, phone number, and residential or postal address.
- Financial information— your income, expenses, assets, liabilities, savings, deposit, employment, and details of the loan or property you are considering. This is not “sensitive information” as defined in the Privacy Act, but we treat it with care.
- Socio-demographic information— such as your marital status, number of dependants, and age, where relevant to assessing a loan. This is not “sensitive information” as defined in the Privacy Act.
- Identity verification information— where required, government-issued identifiers such as a driver’s licence or passport. We collect, use and disclose these only as permitted by law and only to the extent needed to verify your identity or arrange your loan, and we pass them to 1st Street and the relevant lender, who carry out identity and anti-money-laundering verification.
- Documents you upload — such as payslips, bank statements and tax returns, which may be processed (including by automated tools and service providers) to assess loan suitability.
- Conversation records — the content of your chats, messages, and any phone calls with us (see section 7).
- Technical information — device, browser, IP address, and usage data collected automatically (see section 11).
Credit information
We do not collect credit information — such as your credit history or information from a credit report — through the Ask Arthr assistant, and we do not obtain credit reports or credit scores from credit reporting bodies.
Where credit information is needed to assess or arrange your loan, it is collected by 1st Street and its representatives at the application stage. They will ask for your express consent and handle that information under 1st Street’s own privacy and credit reporting arrangements.
Sensitive information
We do not seek “sensitive information” (such as health, racial, political or similar information) and ask that you do not provide it through the Ask Arthr assistant. If you do provide sensitive information, you consent to us collecting it, and we will use it only for the purpose for which you provided it.
Information about other people
If you give us personal information about another person (for example, a co-applicant, partner, guarantor, or your accountant), you warrant that you are authorised to provide it and that you have made that person aware of this policy and how we may use their information.
5How and where we collect it
We collect personal information in a number of ways, including:
- Directly from you — through the Ask Arthr assistant, our website forms and calculators, our portal, and when you contact us by phone, email, or messaging services.
- Automatically — through cookies and similar technologies when you use our website (see section 11).
- From third parties — we may also collect information about you from sources other than you, including but not limited to 1st Street, lenders and credit providers, our referral and introducer partners, comparison and aggregator services, our service providers, your representatives and advisers, publicly available sources, and social media platforms.
Where we collect your information from someone other than you, we take reasonable steps to ensure you are made aware of this policy.
6Why we collect it
We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information to:
- respond to your enquiries and provide the Ask Arthr assistant;
- assess your needs, compare lenders and loan products, and provide credit assistance;
- arrange and process loan applications with lenders and 1st Street;
- verify your identity and meet our legal obligations;
- improve, personalise and secure our services (using de-identified or aggregated data where practicable);
- send you service messages and, where permitted, marketing communications (see section 10); and
- comply with applicable laws and assist regulators and dispute resolution schemes.
If you do not provide the information we request, we may be unable to provide our services to you, assess your needs, or find a suitable loan.
7AI, automated processing and recording
The Ask Arthr assistant uses artificial intelligence and automated processing. Your chats and any phone calls with us may be recorded and stored by us and our service providers for quality, training, security and compliance purposes, and your inputs are processed by AI service providers to generate responses and estimates.
AI outputs are indicative only.
Any rates, borrowing capacity, affordability figures, or recommendations produced by the Ask Arthr assistant are estimates generated automatically. They are not credit advice, a credit assessment, a credit decision, or an offer of credit, and should not be relied upon as such. Any credit decision is made later by a lender, with human involvement, following a full assessment.
We do not permit your personal information to be used to train third-party AI models. We may create and use de-identified and aggregated information derived from your interactions to improve and develop our own services and to generate insights and analytics, and we may share such aggregated, de-identified information — which does not identify you — with our partners and related entities.
8Who we share it with
We may disclose your personal information to the following recipients, for the purposes described in this policy:
- 1st Street Financial, as the holder of the credit licence under which we operate;
- lenders and credit providers on our panel, to obtain quotes and arrange credit;
- our service providers, including Brokermate, our hosting, AI, document-processing, analytics and communications providers;
- your representatives, such as a co-applicant, guarantor, accountant, solicitor, or mortgage referrer where relevant;
- regulators, dispute resolution schemes and authorities, including the OAIC and AFCA, where required or permitted by law;
- our professional advisers, auditors and insurers;
- organisations that help us identify, investigate or prevent fraud, cybercrime or other misconduct;
- any person considering acquiring, investing in, or funding our business (and their advisers), in connection with a potential or actual transaction; and
- other parties where you have consented, or where disclosure is required or authorised by law.
We do not sell your personal information.Disclosures to lenders, 1st Street and our service providers in order to provide the services you have requested are not “sales” of your information.
9Sending information overseas
Some of our service providers are located, or store and process information, outside Australia — including in the United States, and other countries where our service providers operate from time to time. This may occur, for example, when we use overseas cloud hosting, AI, or document-processing providers.
Your consent to overseas disclosure.
By providing your information and using our services, you consent to us disclosing your personal information to these overseas recipients. While we take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients handle your information appropriately, you acknowledge and agree that we may not be accountable under the Privacy Act for how an overseas recipient handles your information, and that you may not be able to seek redress under the Privacy Act in respect of that recipient.
Where we are able to, we put in place contractual and other safeguards requiring overseas recipients to protect your information.
Overseas recipients may also be required to disclose your information under the laws of their country. In those cases, we are not responsible for that disclosure. Because networked storage can be accessed from anywhere, it is not always practicable to identify every country in which your information may be held, and disclosures may occur from time to time in countries other than those referred to above.
10Marketing communications
With your consent (including consent we may reasonably infer from your existing relationship with us), we may send you marketing communications about our products and services and those of 1st Street — including rate reviews and refinance reminders — by email, SMS, phone, and messaging services such as WhatsApp. Service messages relating to an enquiry or application you have made are not marketing and may be sent at any time.
You can opt out of marketing at any time by using the unsubscribe facility in any message or by contacting us at privacy@arthr.com.au. We will action your request within a reasonable time. We comply with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth).
12How we protect your information
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure — including measures such as encryption, access controls, and secure storage by us and our service providers.
However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.
13How long we keep it
We keep your personal information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this policy or as required by law. Where you become a customer, we are generally required to retain credit and financial records for up to seven years after the end of our relationship under laws such as the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth) and anti-money-laundering and taxation laws.
Where you make an enquiry but do not proceed, we keep your information only for a reasonable period, after which we destroy or de-identify it.
14Accessing and correcting your information
You may request access to the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. Please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@arthr.com.au. We will respond within a reasonable time, usually within 30 days.
There is no charge for making a request or for a correction. We may charge a reasonable fee to cover the cost of giving you access to your information. In some circumstances we may decline a request as permitted by the Privacy Act (for example, where access would unreasonably affect another person’s privacy, or where the request is frivolous or vexatious); if we do, we will tell you why.
15Data breaches
We comply with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act. If we become aware of a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to affected individuals, we will assess it and notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and affected individuals as required by law.
16Complaints
If you have a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@arthr.com.au in the first instance. We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to respond within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992. For complaints relating to credit or financial services, you can also contact the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), the external dispute resolution scheme of which 1st Street is a member, at www.afca.org.au or on 1800 931 678.
17People who apply to work with us
If you apply for a job with us, or to become a credit representative under the licence we operate under, we collect personal information to assess your application — including your contact details, work history, qualifications, and information from referees or previous employers you nominate (and whom you consent to us contacting). If you do not provide it, we may be unable to properly consider your application.
Acts directly related to a current or former employment relationship are generally exempt from the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act’s employee records exemption. This section concerns applicants and prospective credit representatives, whose information we handle in accordance with this policy.
18Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The current version will always be available on our website and takes effect when posted. Please check back periodically. Your continued use of our services after a change means you accept the updated policy.
19Contact us
For any privacy question, request or complaint, contact our Privacy Officer:
- Email: privacy@arthr.com.au
- Post: Privacy Officer, arthr pty ltd, 518 Old South Head Road, Rose Bay NSW 2029
This policy is governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia.