Privacy statement

Compare Loans is responsible for the personal information it collects. Its privacy officer handles every privacy question and request.

Write to the privacy officer at hello@compareloans.co.nz.

Your rights over your information come from the Privacy Act 2020.

The enquiry form asks for:

• your first name
• your mobile number
• your email address
• what the loan is for
• how much you want to borrow, as an amount or a range
• your region
• one question about your situation (the choices are listed below)
• the best time for the broker to call you

The question about your situation depends on the form. You pick the answer from a short list, with no box for an exact figure, and the question is one of these:

• how you earn your income (employed, self-employed or other)
• when you would like the money
• whether you own a home
• whether you are buying from a dealer or privately
• what you are doing with your home loan, or where you are up to with it
• whether you are buying a first home, a next home or an investment property
• how much deposit you have
• the loan term you are looking at
• how long your business has been trading
• when your current fixed rate ends

Compare Loans also keeps

• the messages you send by email or through the website, and the replies;
• a record of your consent: when you ticked the box, the wording you agreed to, and the IP address the form came from;
• technical and usage information from analytics tools, such as pages visited, device, browser and the website you came from;
• an update from the broker on what happened to your enquiry, such as "contacted" or "loan settled", so referral fees can be checked.

What Compare Loans never asks for

Compare Loans does not ask how much you earn. It does not ask for your IRD number, identity documents, bank details or credit history; a lender or broker asks for those directly if you apply for a loan.

Mainly so a licensed broker can contact you about your enquiry. Compare Loans uses your information to:

• pass your enquiry to a licensed broker, who will contact you about it;
• reply to your questions and complaints;
• keep a record of your consent and of each referral;
• check the referral fees brokers pay Compare Loans;
• run, secure and improve the website, and see which pages people find useful;
• send you occasional emails, only if you opted in;
• meet its legal obligations.

Giving your details is up to you. Without your first name, mobile number and email address, Compare Loans cannot pass your enquiry to a broker.

The licensed broker

When you tick the consent box and send the form, your enquiry goes to one licensed broker who handles that kind of loan in your region. The broker may contact you by phone, email or text about your enquiry, and only about your enquiry.

The confirmation message Compare Loans sends you names the broker. From then on the broker also holds your information, under the broker's own privacy statement.

Companies that work for Compare Loans

These providers store or process information for Compare Loans, and may use it only to provide their service to Compare Loans:

• website hosting: [CLIENT: hosting provider, and the country where data is stored];
• form handling and customer records (CRM): [CLIENT: CRM vendor, and the country where data is stored];
• email and text message sending: Resend (email, data stored in the United States);
• website analytics: Google Analytics 4 (Google) and Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft).

Advisers and authorities

Compare Loans may share information with its lawyers, accountants and auditors. It shares information with a regulator, a court or the Police when the law requires it.

Nobody else

Compare Loans does not sell your personal information. Your enquiry goes to no one apart from the broker named in your confirmation message and the providers listed above.

Some of it is. Some of the providers above store data outside New Zealand, including in the United States. The brokers are New Zealand businesses, so passing your enquiry to a broker does not send it overseas.

Each provider handles the data only for Compare Loans, under a contract that requires the provider to:

• protect the data;
• tell Compare Loans about any breach;
• delete the data when Compare Loans asks.

Compare Loans stays responsible for your information while a provider holds it.

How people move around the website. Neither tool records what you type into the enquiry form, and both use cookies or similar browser storage.

Google Analytics 4

• It counts visits, pages viewed, how long people stay and which website each visitor came from.
• IP addresses are anonymised.
• It never receives your name, contact details, loan purpose, loan amount, region or any other enquiry answer.
• Google's data-sharing settings are turned off, so Google uses the data only to provide the analytics service to Compare Loans.

Microsoft Clarity

• It records how people scroll and click, so Compare Loans can find pages that are hard to use.
• It runs with strict masking: page text and anything typed into a form field are hidden before a recording is made, so it never captures your name, contact details or enquiry answers.
• It keeps session recordings for about 30 days.

Compare Loans does not run advertising pixels on any page with an enquiry form.

How to opt out

Block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or install Google's opt-out browser add-on for Google Analytics. The website and the enquiry form still work when analytics cookies are blocked.

Once, to confirm your enquiry and name the broker who received your details. Other emails, such as occasional guides about borrowing in New Zealand, come only if you tick the separate, optional box for them.

• Every email names Compare Loans as the sender, includes its contact details and has a free unsubscribe link.
• Every text message names Compare Loans and accepts "STOP" as a reply.
• Compare Loans stops sending within 5 working days of your unsubscribe request.

The broker may contact you by phone, email or text about your enquiry. To stop contact from the broker, tell the broker directly, or ask the Compare Loans privacy officer to pass on your request.

Compare Loans protects your information by:

• sending every form over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection;
• storing enquiries in the CRM, not in ordinary email or spreadsheets;
• giving access only to the people who need it, each with their own login;
• passing each enquiry only to the broker who handles it;
• requiring brokers and service providers, by contract, to keep information secure, not to sell it on, and to report any breach promptly.

If there is a privacy breach

Compare Loans contains the breach and works out whether it has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm. If serious harm is likely, Compare Loans tells the people affected and notifies the Office of the Privacy Commissioner through NotifyUs as soon as practicable, aiming for within 72 hours of finding out.

Long enough to keep a record of the referral and check the referral fee. After that, Compare Loans deletes or anonymises it.

• Enquiry details: 12 months after the last contact about the enquiry.
• Consent records: the same period as enquiry details.
• Emails and complaint records: 24 months.
• Google Analytics data: 14 months, then deleted.

The broker who received your enquiry keeps the information they hold under their own retention rules.

Ask the Compare Loans privacy officer at hello@compareloans.co.nz. You can get a copy of the personal information Compare Loans holds about you, and have it corrected. You get a reply within 20 working days, and you may be asked to confirm who you are first.

You can also:

• withdraw your consent to marketing emails at any time;
• ask Compare Loans to delete your enquiry, where the law allows it;
• ask Compare Loans to pass a deletion request to the broker who received your enquiry.

If you are unhappy with how your information was handled

• Tell the Compare Loans privacy officer first.
• If that does not resolve it, complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz or on 0800 803 909.

The enquiry form is for people aged 18 or over. Compare Loans does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and deletes it on finding out.

Whenever the way Compare Loans handles information changes. The date under the heading shows the current version, and Compare Loans keeps the earlier ones.

Compare Loans announces any significant change in the privacy statement before it takes effect.