This Privacy Policy sets out how and why Cooper Investors Pty Limited (“Cooper Investors”, “CI”, “we” or “us”) collects, stores, holds, uses and discloses personal information about our clients. CI’s Privacy Policy only applies to information about natural persons. CI handles personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (Cth) (2024 Amendment Act).
By using CI’s services or otherwise providing CI with your personal information (or authorizing it to be provided to CI by someone else), you agree to your personal information being handled as set out in this Privacy Policy.
Personal Information
Cooper Investors generally collects personal information in its capacity as a fund manager. This may include clients’ names, addresses, contact details, date of birth, country of residence, investment details, tax file numbers, bank account details and other accounting, audit and financial services related information.
The primary purpose for collecting, holding and using this information is to manage client investment portfolios and provide our fund management services including (but not limited to) making distribution payments and issuing communications such as performance reports, CI corporate communications such as issuing our clients’ performance reports. Depending on our dealings or interactions with you, we may collect personal information for other purposes from time to time.
Collection, maintenance and disclosure of certain personal information is governed by legislation including (but not limited to) the Privacy Act, Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (Cth), the APPs, the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) and Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules Instrument 2007, Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth) / Tax administration Act 1953 (Cth), and the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (Cth).
CI may collect personal information in various ways such as via telephone, email, hardcopy and/or online forms. Most information is collected directly from you, but we may also receive it from third parties such as our custodian and registry provider. We store information in our systems, servers, and with third- party storage providers. Physical records may be held at our premises or secure offsite facilities.
If CI receives personal information that was not requested (i.e. unsolicited personal information), CI will, unless otherwise required or permitted by law, delete or destroy the information as soon as possible after receiving it.
You must not provide us with personal information about another person unless you have clear consent from that person to do so and have informed them that their personal information will be handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy and where they can find it.
You do not have to provide us with your personal information, but if you do not provide us with the required personal information, we may not be able to provide our services or assistance to you.
Further, you retain the right to not identify yourself either by maintaining anonymity or by use of a pseudonym in relation to a particular matter. However, this does not apply if we are required, authorised or by stipulation of the law to deal with identified information or it would be impracticable for us to deal with.
We do not collect any ‘sensitive information’ (e.g. about race and ethnicity, religion, health, sexual orientation), as defined under the Privacy Act.
Purpose for collecting and holding the information
CI collects personal information only where reasonably necessary for Cooper’s functions. We use your personal information to enable us to accept and process the application, administer, personalising your experience on our websites, identifying usage trends and ongoing website enhancements for broader business purposes and manage your investment, communicate with you about your investment and maintain a record of investment details and investors as required by the legislation.
We follow privacy by design principles by building privacy into our systems and processes from the outset. We take a proactive approach to protecting your privacy by considering it in the design of our systems, processes, and services. We only collect the necessary information, apply appropriate security measures to protect your data, and provide ways for you to manage it where applicable. These steps help us to handle your personal information responsibly and in line with legal requirements.
Automated Decision-Making
CI does not use personal information for automated decision-making. Automated decision-making means that a decision about an individual which has a legal or other similarly significant effect is made automatically on the basis of a computer determination, using software algorithms, without any human review. A decision producing a legal effect is something that affects a person’s legal status or their legal rights. If CI introduces automated decision-making in future, we will update this policy to include information on the logic involved and your rights to request a human review.
Direct Marketing
Where your consent has been received, we may also use your personal information for the purposes of informing you (by telephone, mail or email) about other products and services which we believe may be of interest to you. You may opt out at any time by contacting us using the details at the end of this Policy.
Disclosure of personal information by CI
Clients’ personal information may be disclosed to other entities for the purpose of CI providing our funds management or other similar services or undertaking the other relevant purpose for which the information was collected. Personal information may also be disclosed to other entities for any secondary purposes that CI is permitted to use or disclose your information for (which will generally be secondary purposes within your reasonable expectations or that you have consented to). Such entities include the trustees who hold the investments which we manage, third party service providers such as our back office support providers, the Funds’ custodian and bank, and certain government and regulatory bodies such as the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), if authorised or required by law. We may disclose personal information to other types of organisations for the above purposes such as CI’s accountants, financiers, auditors, legal advisers, and other professionals. CI may also disclose personal information to entities for which you have given your consent.
We engage third-party service providers based in Australia to manage and maintain investors’ personal information. These providers may access your personal information for authorised purposes and have a contractual obligation to comply with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Some of these third parties may have affiliated entities located outside Australia. Some regions may include India. The Australian based entity remains accountable for the disclosure of information to overseas recipients.
Where your personal information may be accessed by affiliated entities of the third party service provider based in Australia, the third party service provider has a legal obligation under Australian Privacy Principles to take reasonable steps to ensure the offshore recipient is subject to the same level of data protection as Australia. We will take reasonable steps to contractually require the third party service providers to maintain the confidentiality and security of your personal information and to use it only for the purposes for which it was disclosed.
By providing us with your personal information, you acknowledge and consent to the potential disclosure of your information outside Australia. If you have any concerns about this, please contact us using the details provided in this policy.
Integrity
To seek to ensure the integrity and safety of our clients’ personal information, CI will only disclose any information if our internal procedures are satisfied. CI takes reasonable steps to protect any personal information that we hold from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, alteration and disclosure.
Storage of information
We hold personal information in both paper and electronic form. Personal information in electronic form is regularly backed-up and stored on-site and off-site. CI will implement the following protocols in keeping your personal information secured:
- Security procedures for access to our business premises;
- IT security protocols including security around access of data, firewalls, password protection, and strict rules around VPN access;
- Mandatory confidentiality guidelines for all staff (as outlined in employment contracts).
However, data protections measures are never completely secure and, despite the measures we’ve put in place, CI cannot guarantee the complete security of your personal information.
We will destroy or de-identify personal information once permitted by law and if we no longer need it for any purpose.
Cookies
Like many websites, our Cooper Investors website uses essential cookies. A cookie is a small text file that is sent to your computer (or other device) by the websites that you visit. Cookies may be used to enhance user experience and/or provide us with data to improve our site. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies for such purposes.
Revisions to this Privacy Policy
CI may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Your continued use of CI’s services, requesting our assistance or the provision of further personal information to CI (directly or via an authorized person) after this Privacy Policy has been revised, constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.
Access to, and correction of, your personal information
If you wish to seek access to, or correction of, your personal information please contact us using the contact details at the end of this Policy.
CI takes reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we hold about you is accurate, up-to-date, and complete. You have the right to access, correct and update the personal information that we hold about you by contacting us using any of the details set out below.
All access requests for personal information must be in writing and must satisfy our internal procedures that the client making the request is the same person as the subject of the request. If a request for access is received and accepted, we will typically grant access by giving a copy or, a summary of the personal information to you. We may refuse access to all or part of your personal information in certain circumstances as permitted under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
Please contact the Compliance Manager at the address set out below as soon as possible if there are any changes to your personal information or if you believe the personal information we hold about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date for CI to update your file accordingly. However, there may be occasions where we refuse to do so as permitted under the Privacy Act.
If your request to either access information or correct your personal information is denied, we will notify you of the reasons for our refusal. We will not charge you a fee for the making of the access request or correcting your personal information request.
CI aims to respond to any access request or correcting your personal information request within thirty (30) business days.
Notifiable data breaches
In the event that there has been a breach of your personal information that is likely to cause serious harm to you, we will make appropriate notifications to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required under the Notifiable Data Breach Scheme.
Complaints
If you wish to make a complaint about a breach by CI of this Privacy Policy or the APPs under the Privacy Act please also contact the Compliance Manager at the address set out below. The Compliance Manager will investigate the issue and determine the steps to undertake to resolve your complaint. We will notify you in writing of the outcome of the investigation. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the investigation, you may contact us to discuss your concerns or complain to the Australian Privacy Commissioner via www.oaic.gov.au.
Contact details
Head of Compliance
Cooper Investors Pty Limited
Level 12, 8 Exhibition Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: (03) 9660 2600
Fax: (03) 9660 2699