The kinds of personal information that we collect and hold about you will depend on the circumstances in which it is being collected, including whether we collect the information from you as a customer, participating provider, contractor, stakeholder, job applicant or in some other capacity.

If you request a quote for a product or service offered by our participating providers, we may collect your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth and any other information that we need to be able to provide you with the quote. For example, if you wish to obtain a quote for health insurance, we’ll ask you for basic information about your family circumstances, pre-existing health conditions and general health care needs. With this information we’ll be able to provide you with a comparison of policies that meet your needs. The information we collect will vary depending on the products you’re interested in. If you decide to apply for or buy a product through us, we’ll ask you for additional information so that we can complete your request. Where it is lawful and practicable to do so, we will allow you to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym.

If you deal with us in some other capacity (for example, as a participating provider, a supplier or a stakeholder), we may collect your name, contact details and any other information you choose to provide to us.
Any personal information that you provide via our website or contact centre (for example, for comparison purposes, to obtain a quote or to purchase products) is collected and stored by Health.compare.
To provide some of our services, we may need to collect and hold your sensitive information (such as medical or certain lifestyle information). This may be necessary, for example, if you wish to obtain a comparison quote on health or life insurance. We will only collect sensitive information about you when knowingly and voluntarily submitted.
Some of the products offered by our participating providers can cover more than one person (for example, family and couples health insurance policies that cover two or more people). If you provide us with information about your partner or a dependant, you must obtain that person’s permission to give us the information and inform them of this policy.

If we are not able to collect your personal information, or if you provide us with incorrect or incomplete information, we may not be able to provide you with our products or services or do business with you or the organisation with which you are connected.

We collect, hold, use, and disclose personal information so that we can:

• provide you with our services and products;
• assess your eligibility for the products and services that you’re interested in, including any special offers you’ve redeemed in connection with your purchase;
• in the case of some products to let you know that your product is due for renewal and to arrange for it to be renewed;
• verify your identity and manage any enquiries or complaints you have after you’ve used our services or purchased a product through us;
• let you know about other products, services or promotional offers that we think may be of interest to you;
• ensure we comply with the requirements of our participating providers;
• conduct research and analysis to improve our understanding of your interests in relation to our services and offers, including improving our data analytics capability to provide our customers with better comparisons;
• develop insights from our interactions with our customers to enhance our services and the way we deliver them so that we can keep on meeting the needs of our customers;
• analyse your interactions and use of our online services to understand the effectiveness of our marketing initiatives;
• maintain and improve our customer service by monitoring our service for quality control, quality and training purposes;
• consider job applicants for current and future employment;
• manage our relationships with our participating providers, suppliers and stakeholders;
• manage our internal business, in particular financial management, reporting and accounting; and
• meet our regulatory and legal obligations.

We may also use your information for other purposes required or authorised by or under law, including purposes for which you have provided your consent.

If you decide to apply for or buy a particular product through Health.compare, we’ll share your information with the product provider and service providers so that we can complete the sale or application. If the provider contacts you directly, they may provide us with information collected from you for the purposes described in this policy.

We use service providers to help us provide our comparison services and to conduct our day to day business activities. We take steps to ensure that all our service providers agree to protect the privacy and security of your personal information, and that they only use it for the purposes in this policy, or any collection notice that we provide to you at the time we collect your personal information.

These service providers generally help us by:

• helping us fulfil customer offers and to manage competitions that we run from time to time;
• processing payments for some purchases made on the Health.compare website;
• providing us with software so that we can run comparisons and provide you with our services;
• keeping records related to the services we provide and, if you decide to buy through us, your purchase of the product;
• monitoring our telephone calls for quality control and training purposes so we can keep improving our customer service;
• providing us with software that supports communication between our IT systems, including Australian-hosted cloud services; and
• supporting our electronic direct marketing activities, such as sending our marketing emails.

Some of the service providers are located overseas. This means we may disclose personal information to overseas providers who are located in Fiji, the Philippines, India, New Zealand, Malaysia, United States, Ireland, Germany and Canada.

We also share personal information with other companies within the Health.compare group for the purposes we’ve already mentioned.

We use personal information to inform you about products and services offered by Health.compare and our business partners, which we think may be of interest to you. When we contact you it may be by mail, telephone, email, SMS or social media. Information about how to opt-out of receiving marketing material from us is set out below.

You can let us know at any time if you do not want the personal information that we hold about you to be used or disclosed for direct marketing purposes, or if you do not wish to be contacted in any of the above ways, by contacting us. In some circumstances we may need to contact you to obtain additional information, to verify your identity or to clarify your request.

If you wish to unsubscribe from future marketing and promotional material, please click here.

Depending on the service you’ve asked that we provide, we may collect government-related identifiers, such as Medicare numbers, or a driver’s licence number. We collect such details only where it is lawful to do so. We do not use government-related identifiers as our own identifier of individuals.

We may store your information in hardcopy and/or in electronic form. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is protected from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

This may include a range of systems and communication security measures, as well as the secure storage of hard copy documents. In addition, access to your personal information will be restricted to those properly authorised to have access.

We rely on the personal information we hold in conducting our business. Therefore, it is very important that the information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you believe that your personal information is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, irrelevant or misleading, please contact our Privacy Officer using the details provided below and we’ll correct that information within 30 days of receiving any information we need to make the change.

Before we correct your personal information, we’ll need to verify and confirm your identity. If someone makes the request on your behalf, we will require your prior consent or we will contact you directly to collect your consent.

If we don’t agree that the information needs to be corrected, we’ll write to let you know why. If that occurs, you can ask us to include a statement with the information that says you believe it’s inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, irrelevant or misleading.

In addition, our employees and the contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by us.

Our website is professionally hosted and operates in a secure environment. You should however be aware that there is always an inherent risk in transmitting your personal information via the Internet.

Cookies are pieces of information that a website downloads to your computer to record your preferences while you browse. Other technologies that may be used by Health.compare include web beacons (which may operate in conjunction with cookies). The information collected through these technologies may be used by Health.compare to improve and customise your experience on our website. In addition, we collect aggregated non-personally identifiable data from our website to help us maintain and improve delivery of the Health.compare online service, to provide a consistent experience and targeted marketing. This aggregated information assists Health.compare to improve content and website navigation.

You can configure your web browser to reject and block cookies. If you decide to delete or block certain cookies, your experience on our website may be limited.

When you visit any of our online resources, our system may collect information about your visit for statistical purposes, including:

• server address;
• top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc.);
• the date and time of your visit to the site;
• the pages you accessed and documents downloaded during your visit;
• the previous site you visited;
• if you’ve visited our site before; and
• the type of browser used.

We provide links to third party websites from our website. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices or policies of these third party websites.

These links are provided for your convenience and do not represent Health.compare’s endorsement of any linked third party website. We recommend that you review the privacy policies of these third parties prior to providing them with your personal information.

You can request access to the personal information we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer using the details provided below. Within about 2 business days of receiving your request, we will let you know if we need additional information to process your request and how long we’ll take.

You can expect to have access to the information within 30 days of providing us with the information we need to find your personal information. Before we make your personal information available to you, we’ll need to verify and confirm your identity. If someone makes the request on your behalf, we will require your prior written consent or we will contact you directly to collect your consent.

In some circumstances we may refuse to give you access to some or all information you have requested. For example, where we have been unable to verify and confirm your identity, if providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others; or giving access would reveal evaluative information in connection with a commercially sensitive decision-making process.

If we deny or restrict access to the information you have requested, we will give you written reasons for this decision when we respond to your request.

In most cases, access to your personal information will be provided free of charge. There may be circumstances where, because of the nature of your request, we might need to charge a fee to cover the time we’ll need to spend collating your personal information or putting it in a format that we’re able to send it to you (whether at your request or to maintain the security of the information). We will let you know before we start working on your request so that you can make an informed decision.

Please contact our Privacy Officer using the details provided below if you have any concerns or complaints about the manner in which we have collected or handled your personal information. We will investigate your complaint and you can expect a response from us in writing within 30 days. If after our initial assessment of your complaint we decide that we need more information or that we’ll need more time to respond to you, we’ll let you know within a few days of receiving your complaint.

If you consider your privacy concerns have not been resolved satisfactorily by us, or you wish to obtain more information on privacy requirements, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on 1300 363 992 or visit their website at www.oaic.gov.au.

How to contact us

If you:

• have queries, concerns or complaints about the manner in which your personal information has been collected or handled by Health.compare;
• would like to request a hard copy of this privacy policy or discuss any issues relating to this policy or privacy matters generally; or
• would like to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you;

Email: privacy@health.compare
Ph: 1300 861 413