Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy.
Property transactions require us to hold a great deal of information about you. This page explains what we collect, why we need it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it.
This policy explains how Quintess Law Pty Ltd trading as Quintess Property Law handles personal information. We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, and by the confidentiality and professional conduct obligations that apply to us as a legal practice.
The short version
We collect what we need to act for you, and no more. We are required by law to verify who you are before we can act on a property matter. We share your information only where the transaction requires it, or where the law requires it. We keep it secure, and we keep it for as long as we are obliged to.
If you would rather read the detail, it is all below.
What we collect
Information you give us
- Your name, date of birth, address, email and telephone number
- Details of the property, the contract, the parties and the agent
- Financial information relevant to the transaction — deposit, finance, lender, bank account details for settlement funds, and information about the source of your funds
- Identity documents, so that we can verify who you are
- Information about your circumstances where it affects the matter — for example a related sale, a deceased estate, a separation, a trust or a company structure
Information we obtain from others
- Searches and certificates from land titles offices, councils, water and revenue authorities
- Information from the other party’s lawyer or conveyancer, the real estate agent, your broker, your lender and your accountant
- Verification results from our identity and compliance providers
Information we collect through this website
- What you send us through an enquiry form, quote request or contract upload
- Technical information such as IP address, browser type, pages visited and referring site, collected through analytics and cookies
Sensitive information
We do not seek sensitive information unless it is directly relevant to your matter — for example, health information in a matter involving capacity, or information about a family law circumstance affecting a sale. Where we do need it, we will tell you why, and we will collect it with your consent.
Identity verification and anti-money laundering
This is the part of our collection that people ask about most, so we want to be plain about it.
Legal practices and conveyancers providing property services are reporting entities under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth). We are required by that Act to identify and verify our clients, to understand who ultimately owns or controls a company or trust we act for, to make reasonable enquiries about the source of funds where our risk assessment requires it, to monitor the matter, and to report certain matters to AUSTRAC.
We collect this information because Australian law requires us to. It is not optional, and we cannot act for you on a property matter without it. It is separate from, and additional to, the identity verification required for electronic settlement.
On your identity documents. We verify your identity from your documents, and we then record only what the law requires us to keep — the details taken from the document, the type of document, what we did to verify it, and the outcome. We do not retain full copies of your passport or licence for record-keeping purposes, and we take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify any copy once it is no longer needed.
Why we collect it
| PURPOSE | WHAT THIS MEANS |
|---|---|
| To act for you | Reviewing your contract, ordering searches, corresponding with the other side, preparing for settlement and completing the transaction. |
| To meet our legal obligations | Identity verification and anti-money laundering compliance, duty and revenue requirements, trust accounting, and our obligations as a legal practice. |
| To manage the relationship | Conflict checks, costs agreements, invoicing, and keeping you updated as your matter progresses. |
| To improve what we do | Understanding how our website is used, and asking for feedback after settlement. You can decline this. |
We will not use your information for a purpose you would not reasonably expect, and we will not sell it.
Who we share it with
A property transaction cannot be completed in private. To act for you, we will need to disclose information to:
- the lawyer or conveyancer for the other party, and the real estate agent
- your lender, and your broker where you have asked us to deal with them
- the land titles office, the revenue office, the council, and other search and registration authorities
- the electronic settlement platform through which settlement occurs, and its participants
- our search, identity verification and compliance providers
- our practice management, accounting, email and file storage providers
- AUSTRAC, and any regulator, court or authority where the law requires disclosure
- our insurers, auditors and professional advisers, where necessary.
We disclose what the recipient needs, and no more. We require our service providers to protect your information and to use it only for the purpose we engaged them for.
Where your information is held
A property transaction cannot be completed in private. To aWe use cloud-based systems. Some of our providers store or process data on servers outside Australia, or have personnel outside Australia who may access it in the course of supporting us.
Where this is the case, we take reasonable steps to ensure the provider handles your information in a way consistent with the Australian Privacy Principles.
How we protect it
– Access to our systems is restricted and protected by multi-factor authentication.
– Information in transit and at rest is encrypted by our providers.
– We collect only what we need, and destroy or de-identify what we no longer need.
– We have a documented response plan for suspected data breaches.
If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, we will assess it and notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the law requires.
A word about payment redirection fraud. Criminals target property settlements by intercepting emails and sending false bank details. We will never email you a change to our bank account details. Before you transfer any money in connection with your matter, telephone us on the number we gave you at the start – not a number in an email – and confirm the account verbally with us.
How long we keep it
We are required to retain client files and records for the periods set by legal profession regulation and by anti-money laundering law, which requires records to be kept for seven years after the end of the business relationship or the relevant transaction. We keep your file for at least that long, and then destroy it securely.
Where we no longer need information and no law requires us to keep it, we destroy or de-identify it.
Your choices
Access and correction
You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is wrong. We will respond within a reasonable period, and there is no charge for making the request. In limited circumstances we may need to decline access — for example where the law prevents disclosure — and if so we will explain why.
Not identifying yourself
You are welcome to make a general enquiry without giving your name. But we cannot act for you on a property matter anonymously or under a pseudonym, because the law requires us to verify who you are.
Marketing
If you have subscribed to our updates or downloaded a resource, we may send you occasional emails. Every one of them has an unsubscribe link, and we will act on it promptly. We do not send marketing to clients about matters unrelated to their file without asking first.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies for basic functionality and analytics. You can disable cookies in your browser, though parts of the site may not work as intended.
If you have a concern
If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us. Contact us using the details below, and set out what happened. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly and respond in writing, ordinarily within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can take the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
Changes to this policy
We will update this policy as our practice, our systems and the law change. The current version is the one published here.