Privacy Statement
Total Transaction Realty Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy statement outlines how we collect, store, use and share your personal information. For more information, read our full privacy policy here.
What information do we collect?
We may collect personal information about you, either directly from you or from other parties and we may generate information about you when we carry out our business.
The types of personal information we collect about you may include your:
• Contact information: your name, phone number, email address, postal address, physical address
• Documents that verify your identity and other personal details: such as your passport or drivers’ licence number
• Subscriptions/preferences: when you subscribe to receive our newsletter or updates, as well as content preferences to help us identify which material you want to receive
• Billing or purchase information
• Technical information: information about the device used to access the website or other social media sites, such as IP address, browser type, time zone settings and mobile network information.
What do we do with it?
We collect and use your personal information to provide the information and services that you request from us, and to provide you with information about other services we consider appropriate.
When necessary, we may use your information to:
• Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations (including Anti Money Laundering/Counter Financing of Terrorism compliance and audit and reporting requirements).
• Trade promotion purposes
• Purposes related to promotion, marketing, and operations
• Statistical purposes
• Defend or enforce our rights - For example, to collect money owed to us.
Who do we share it with?
Besides our staff and our related companies, we may share this information with third parties who enable us to provide you with our services. These include:
• Professional advisers
• Product providers
• Our service out-source providers such as IT consultants, custodians, etc.
• Suppliers and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, marketing, and related purposes.
We will only share your personal information with third parties where it is necessary to help us do what we collected your information for, where it is required by law or where you give us authority to. We require these third parties to adhere to our strict confidentiality requirements for handling personal information and we seek to ensure that they comply with the Privacy Act 2020.
Where do we store it?
We use third party cloud service providers to store and process the information we collect. We use Microsoft Office 365 cloud servers located in New Zealand. We ensure that our cloud-based service providers are subject to appropriate security and information handling arrangements and that the information stored or processed by them remains subject to confidentiality obligations.
What are my rights?
You do not have to provide information to us. If you choose not to provide necessary personal information when requested, we maybe be unable to provide certain information or services to you.
You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong. If you have any questions about this privacy statement or you’d like to ask for a copy of the information we hold on you, or to have it corrected, please contact us on 09 836 3119 or by email info@oneagencycentralwest.co.nz
Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
New Zealand is a target for money launderers. It is estimated that well over $1 billion a year from drug dealing and fraud is laundered through New Zealand businesses.
New Zealand introduced its Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing Terrorism (AML/CFT) legislation in 2009. Banks, financial institutions and many other sectors have been operating under the legislation since June 2013 and real estate agents have been captured under the legislation since 1 January 2019.
All real estate agents in New Zealand have legal obligations to comply with the AML/CFT legislation and will be requesting more documents and information than they have in the past.
Proving your identity
Since 1 January 2019 Real Estate agents will, among other things, be required to verify the identity of their clients in accordance with AML/CFT legislation. This is called Customer Due Diligence (CDD).
This means they are required to identify who their clients are (i.e. who they are acting for). This could be individuals, companies, trusts, or other client types like societies and government departments etc. This means asking for information to verify your full name, date of birth, and residential address. This can be done in several ways but, not unlike the banks, they will ask to see identity documents like your Passport, Driver Licence, utility bill etc. In some cases, they have obligations to establish source of funds and wealth.
If your real estate agent cannot verify your identity in line with the legislation, they will not be able to act for you.
Identity verification can take days and sometimes weeks if a Trust or company is involved, or where parties reside overseas.