V Travel Insurance

Security & Privacy

Current as at 01 January 2021

V Travel Insurance is committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy describes our current policies and practices in relation to the management of your personal information.

We collect personal information and, in certain circumstances, sensitive information from you and others to enable us to provide you with a quote and to arrange and manage your travel insurance and insurance related services.

To help us produce an online quote for your travel insurance, we have to ask you some specific questions via our website. These include:

  • when are you leaving and returning home?
  • where are you travelling to?
  • how long are you travelling for?
  • your age

In addition, we also ask a couple of health questions in relation to yourself, your travelling companions and anyone else upon whom your travel plans depends to ensure that you are eligible for the cover we offer.

One of the great advantages of our insurance is that you can simply print your certificate and policy documents in the comfort of your own home or office. Whilst you will receive immediate online confirmation when your application has been accepted, we also send you an email confirmation for your records. This is why we ask you to enter your email address. By providing this, you are giving us permission to use it to send you documents relevant to your insurance.

Any personal information you provide is also used by us, and our agents to administer your and our rights and obligations in relation to the insurance services, including managing, processing and investigating claims.

We may also use some of this information (not sensitive) to assist us in product development, marketing, competitions, research, IT systems maintenance and development, recovery against third parties and for any other purposes with your consent or where authorised by law. We may occasionally notify you by email or other methods about our services, products, special offers, contests, events or articles we think will be of interest to you. If you would rather not receive this information, you can opt out by using the unsubscribe facility included in all our marketing correspondence, or by contacting us directly.

Circumstances where you can deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym

Where possible, you have the option of not identifying yourself or using a pseudonym when you deal with us. For example, you can make general enquiries on our website, call us to ask questions about the products we offer, or obtain a basic indicative quote without identifying yourself or by using a pseudonym. However, we require you to provide us with your personal information in order for us to process your application for, and to provide you with, our products and services.

What we expect of you

When you give V Travel Insurance personal and sensitive information about other individuals, we rely on you to have made or to make them aware:

  • that you will or may provide their information to us; and how to contact us
  • the types of third parties to whom the information may be provided;
  • the relevant purposes we and the third parties we disclose it to, will collect, use and disclose it
  • that we have a privacy policy and where it is located; and
  • how they can request access and correct their information, or make a complaint

If it is sensitive information we rely on you to have obtained their consent on these matters. If you have not done or will not do either of these things you must tell us before you provide the relevant information.

What if you don’t provide some information to us?

If you do not agree to the above or will not provide us with personal and, in certain circumstances, sensitive information, we cannot process your application, issue you with a policy or provide you with our services and products.

Types of third parties to whom personal information may be provided.

Personal information may be disclosed to third parties involved in your insurance such as insurers, reinsurers, claims handlers and investigators, cost containment providers, medical and health service providers, legal and other professional advisers, your agents and our related companies.

Some of the parties referred to above may be located in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America. There may be certain circumstances that require disclosure of your personal and sensitive information to other countries in order for us to be able to provide insurance related services to you. If your consent for overseas disclosure is not provided, service provision may be severely impacted.

Security of your personal information

Your personal information may be stored in hard copy documents, as electronic data, or in our software or systems. We strive to protect any personal and sensitive information that we hold from misuse and loss, and to protect it from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Some of the ways we achieve this are:

  • confidentiality requirements on our employees
  • policies on document storage security
  • security measures for access to our systems
  • only providing access once proper identification has been given
  • controlling access to our premises
  • website protection measures

We may also use third party data storage providers and servers to store your personal information.

Transfer of information overseas

We may transfer your personal information overseas where it is necessary for the purposes described above. For example, your insurer may be based overseas and we need to provide your personal information to them to arrange your cover.

Keeping information up to date and accessing it

We take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal and sensitive information is accurate, complete, and up-to-date whenever we collect, disclose or use it.

You are entitled to access your information if you wish and request correction if required. You may not access or correct personal or sensitive information of others unless you have been authorised by them or otherwise under law, or unless they are your dependants under 16 years. In cases where we do not agree to give you access to or to correct your personal information, we will give you reasons why.

We do not charge you for making a request to access or correct your personal information , however, we may charge an administration fee for providing you with access to your personal and sensitive information.

How to contact us

If you wish to gain access to your personal information, have a complaint about a breach of your privacy or you have any query on how your personal and sensitive information is collected or used, or any other matter relating to our Privacy Policy you should first contact us with your complaint in writing (including by email) using the address below. We will do our best to try and resolve your issue and investigate the matters raised as simply and quickly as possible.

Privacy Officer
Chase Underwriting Solutions Pty Ltd
Level 1, 68 Clarke Street
Southbank, VIC 3006

Email: complaints@chaseunderwriting.com.au

If you remain dissatisfied, you can contact the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) which is an independent body that operates nationally in Australia and aims to resolve certain insurance disputes. This service is free of charge to customers.

Australian Financial Complaints Authority Limited
GPO Box 3, Melbourne VIC 3001

Phone: 1800 931 678
Web: https://www.afca.org.au/

Where you remain dissatisfied with their response, you may direct your complaint to the Privacy Commissioner in writing:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001

For more information about privacy in general, you can refer to the Privacy Commissioner’s web site: www.oaic.gov.au

This privacy policy may be revised from time to time in light of any changes or developments in the services and products we provide, or where the privacy legislation changes. We will provide the updated privacy policy on our website. If you are dissatisfied with our response, you should refer the matter to the privacy commissioner’s office in accordance with the Act.

Credit card security

V Travel Insurance uses industry standard 128 bit SSL (Secure Socket Layers) to encrypt data transferred between your browser and our server. Regarded as bank level encryption, 128 bit is the strongest level of encryption supported by standard web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. Customer credit card details are processed by eWAY together with Commonwealth Bank and are not stored on our servers at any time. There is no risk of credit card details being viewed or used.

Javascript & cookies

In order for this website to process your order correctly Javascript MUST be enabled. V Travel Insurance does not take responsibility for loss of data or incorrect capture as a result of Javascript being turned off.

Anonymous Data

We use technology to collect anonymous information about the use of our website. For example, when you browse our website, we log your IP address, the date and time of your visit, any pages or links visited and the type of browser used. This information is used for statistical purposes, improving the content and functionality of our website, and to prevent misuse of our systems.

You authorise us to lodge a cookie in your computer for the purpose of tracking. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information that our web page transfers to your computer’s hard drive for statistical purposes. Cookies do not damage your computer and you can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie so that you can decide if you want to accept it. Cookies by themselves cannot be used to discover the identity of the user. Cookies collect anonymous data about the usage of our website, allowing us to recognise your computer when you return in the future, and where our website needs to retain information from one page to the next, in order to increase the functionality and user experience on our website and to prevent misuse of our systems. Other information that is tracked by use of cookies includes the URL that you have come from and any pages or links visited, the date and time of your visit, the browser used and your IP address.

If your firewall rejects our cookies, then we shall not be able to accept your orders and you should allow access for this purpose. You authorise us to collect information on your domain name, PC, word system, version and internet user.