AIST collects personal information to be able to provide services to our members. To provide those services AIST engages with a variety of different stakeholders. This policy covers all of the stakeholders that we interact with. Consequently we collect personal information for a variety of reasons including:

• to tailor the content of our website to your preference
• to improve our online services
• to process member and non-member registrations
• to maintain membership records
• to facilitate member elections to the AIST board
• to establish and run professional development programs
• to maintain academic records in accordance with regulatory body requirements
• to develop and provide member services and member benefits
• to identify information and services relevant to membership of AIST or to the industry
• to represent the profit-to-member superannuation industry to external parties
• to provide special offers on behalf of our industry partners, sponsors and exhibitors at events and conferences
• to partner with organisations relevant to our members' needs

This information is collected to further AIST's objectives as set out in our constitution.

We collect information such as names, addresses, telephone and email contacts as well as information that helps build our contact profiles, such as your gender, employer, position title and areas of interest and expertise. We collect information on membership status, AIST events attended and continuing professional development hours earned with AIST. We may also collect information you provide to us about your educational qualifications.

We also collect details of the products and services you have purchased from us or that you have enquired about, together with any additional information necessary to deliver those products and services and to respond to your enquiries.

We may also collect any additional information that you provide to us directly through our websites or indirectly through use of our websites, digital or online presence, that you provide to our representatives or otherwise.

In some cases we collect information you provide to us regarding dietary requirements, medical conditions, disabilities and your emergency contacts.

To facilitate international events we also collect information you provide us for international travel arrangements such as your passport number, date of birth, travel insurance details, citizenship and your place of birth.

We may collect information about you from biographies you provide us for events or publications, including photographs. We also photograph, audio and video record many of our events, and we also store that information.

We collect your personal information as you provide it to us through our registration department and team, customer surveys or interactions with our representatives from time to time.

We also collect information about non-members for the purposes of providing information about membership, services and products, as well as to support our education, information, research and advocacy activities.

We may also collect some information that is not personal information because it does not identify you or anyone else. For example, we may collect anonymous answers to surveys or aggregated information about how users use our website.

AIST is a registered training organisation and consequently must collect and report certain information to the regulator, Australian Skills Quality Authority.

In addition to the information noted above, the additional information collected for these purposes includes:

• Victorian Student Number
• Languages spoken at home and level of English language proficiency
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin
• Level of schooling completed
• Employment status
• Reasons for undertaking the relevant educational course

AIST may use third party service providers to deliver educational services and accordingly your personal information may be passed on to them to ensure that you are provided with the course you register for or express an interest in. We require those third parties to similarly comply with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act.

We collect your personal information directly from you unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so. When collecting personal information from you, we may collect in ways including:

• through your access of and use of our website
• during conversations between you and our representatives
• from business cards provided to us
• from email communication with our representatives
• from contracts signed for services and/or products or
• when you, or your representative, complete an application, registration form or purchase order.

We may collect personal information about you from the following third parties:

• your employer - for example they may sign you up as a new member when you join or change employer or to attend one of our events
• colleagues within your business or network that provide your information to us or through a referral
• your online profiles (in line with any restrictions imposed by the media platform) or the pages of your company website
• from third party companies such as credit reporting agencies, law enforcement agencies and other government entities.

We keep our records in written and electronic format. We may also make sound and visual recordings at our events and some of the programs we run.

If you visit our website to browse, read, or download information, your web browser automatically sends us (and we may retain) information such as the:

• Internet domain through which you access the Internet
• Internet Protocol address of the computer you are using
• type of browser software and operating system you are using
• date and time you access our site
• the Internet address of the site from which you linked directly to our site.

We will use this information as aggregate data to help us maintain this site, e.g., to determine the number of visitors to different sections of our site, to ensure the site is working properly, and to help us make our site more accessible and useful. We will not use this information to identify individuals, except for site security or law enforcement purposes.

We may use cookies in order to customize this site for return visitors. These cookies are not required for site functionality. Additionally, third-party widgets such as YouTube or Flickr may install cookies depending on their configuration. You are not required to accept any cookies to use this site.

We use a tool called “Google Analytics” to collect information about use of this site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit this site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to this site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve this site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit this site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use (as amended for government websites) and the Google Privacy Policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics if you disable or refuse the cookie, disable JavaScript, or use the opt-out service provided by Google- external site.

We collect personal information about you so that we can perform our business activities and functions and to provide best possible quality of customer service.

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

• to provide products and services to you and to send communications requested by you
• to answer your enquiries and to provide information or advice about existing and new products or services
• to provide you with access to protected areas of our website
• to assess the performance of our website and to improve the operation of our website
• to conduct business processing functions including providing personal information to our contractors, service providers or other third parties
• for the administrative, marketing (including direct marketing), planning, product or service development, quality control and research purposes of AIST, our contractors or service providers
• to provide your updated personal information to our contractors, service providers, media partners or sponsors
• to update our records and keep your contact details up to date
• to process and respond to any complaint made by you
• to advise your employer of your attendance, relevant assessment results and CPD attainment at AIST events and educational programs
• to comply with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in co-operation with any governmental authority of any country (or political sub-division of a country).

Your personal information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this Privacy Policy.

If you do not provide us with the personal information described above, some or all of the following may happen:

• we may be unable to provide the requested products or services to you, either to the same standard or at all
• we may be unable to track and report on your CPD, including to your employer, or your entitlement to accreditation
• we may be unable to issue training certificates, diplomas or other validations of training completion
• we may be unable to engage you in consultation on matters of importance to the superannuation industry
• we may be unable to provide you with information about products and services that you may want, including information about discounts, sales or special promotions or
• we may be unable to tailor the content of our websites and marketing content to your preferences and your experience of our websites may not be as enjoyable or useful.

The personal information we collect about you will not be used or disclosed other than in accordance with the Privacy Act, and for the purposes for which the information was collected.

We may disclose personal information that we collect about you to the organisers, speakers, exhibitors, industry partners and sponsors of our events. We may also disclose personal information about you to our service providers, such as technology providers, auditors, bankers and mailing houses to assist us in providing services. We may also disclose information about your activities with AIST to your employer. We may also be required to disclose personal information about you on the request pursuant to state or federal law, for example to regulators such as the Australian Skills Quality Authority.

If you are a member of the AIST board, or you participate in AIST committees or working groups, your information may be published in AIST's annual report, conference books or on our website.

AIST may distribute marketing material or other communications to you for the purposes of keeping you informed about your membership and entitlements, developments in the superannuation industry or other significant matters that fall within the objectives of AIST. This information may come from a third party on behalf of AIST and as part of our service offering to members. If you do not wish to receive marketing or third party communications from AIST or its partners, you should contact us.

We may disclose your personal information to:

• our employees, contractors or service providers for the purposes of operation of our business or our website or to fulfil requests by you
• web hosting providers, IT systems administrators, mailing houses, couriers, payment processors, data entry service providers, electronic network administrators, debt collectors, and professional advisors such as accountants, solicitors, business advisors and consultants to provide products and services to you including, without limitation:
  • travel and accommodation service providers
  • external event organisers
  • our industry partners, exhibitors and sponsors
  • conference and event venues including hotels, conference centres, restaurants and golf clubs
  • expo organisers and related service providers
  • suppliers and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, marketing, and related purposes
  • any organisation for any authorised purpose with your express consent.

We may send you direct marketing communications and information about our products and services that we consider may be of interest to you. These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS, fax and email, in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003(Cth). If you indicate a preference for a method of communication, we will endeavour to use that method whenever practical to do so. In addition, at any time, you may opt-out of receiving direct marketing communications from us by contacting us or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communications and we will then ensure that your name is removed from our mailing list.

We endeavour to keep secure any personal information submitted to us electronically. However, transmissions over the internet cannot be guaranteed as totally secure, and therefore such information is provided to AIST at the risk of the person submitting the data.

In some cases we may also collect your personal information through the use of cookies. When you access our website, we may send a "cookie" (which is a small summary file containing a unique ID number) to your computer. This enables us to recognise your computer and greet you each time you visit our website without the need to re-register. It also enables us to keep track of products or services you view so that, if you consent, we can send you news about those products or services. We also use cookies to measure digital traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure digital transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to data to improve our online products and services. Our cookies do not collect personal information. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.

We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website, track users' movements, and gather broad demographic information.

Our website may from time to time contain links to other websites. AIST cannot control the privacy practices of these other websites and does not take any responsibility for how they might handle your personal information.

AIST uses website analytics to better understand the needs and interests of users of the site. This is a third party service that AIST utilises and it collects information about your use of AIST's website. The service we use is Google Analytics and their privacy policy is available on their website.

We may keep information that will collect for an unlimited period of time.

All of our data is stored in written and/or electronic formats and we safeguard your personal information using a combination of secure premises and secure storage systems, firewalls and encryption technology and internal policies to protect your personal information. We take all reasonable steps to secure your personal information and protect it.

We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We may hold your information in either electronic or hard copy form. Personal information is destroyed or de-identified when no longer needed and in accordance with our record destruction policy.

As our website is linked to the internet, and the internet is inherently insecure, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet. Accordingly, any personal information or other information which you transmit to us online is transmitted at your own risk.

By registering for an AIST event you authorise AIST to record the presentation (which includes any question or comments by any participant or audience member) in audio, vidoe or still photo format, or all three. I agree that AIST is the owner of the copyright and other intellectual property in that recording or image and that it may use the recording or images for any purpose it considers appropriate, including publicity, education or other activities and may earn income for AIST's own benefit. I waive any moral rights I may have. AIST is not obliged to exercise the right to make any recording.

We seek to ensure that your contact details are correct through direct communication with you, AIST's annual membership renewal process and our secure member login function on our website where members can update their own personal information and preferences at any time.

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing it (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you).

There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to the personal information we hold. For example, we may need to refuse access if granting access would interfere with the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of confidentiality. If that happens, we will give you written reasons for any refusal.

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request us to amend it. We will make every effort to correct the information as soon as possible.

We may disclose personal information to our contractors, third party suppliers, sponsors and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above.

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.

We may disclose your personal information to entities located outside of Australia, including the following:

• our data hosting and other IT service providers, located in United States of America and Singapore
• other third parties located in the USA, UK, China and Europe. This may include hotels, travel bureaus and event venues we use for international events.