1. OUR PRIVACY NOTIFICATION TO YOU
This Privacy Notice explains how we use and share your personal information.
Maris IT Development is a credit bureau, registered with the National Credit Regulator (“the NCR”) under reference no: NCRCB23
We strive to ensure your privacy is protected and in doing so will make every effort to ensure that the following principles are followed when processing your Personal Information. Your information will be:
- used in a lawful, fair and transparent manner;
- collected for lawful purposes and only used in processing activities that are compatible with the lawful purposes;
- limited to what is necessary for achieving lawful purposes;
- accurate and up-to-date;
- retained for no longer than 72 hours to meet our legal obligations to the National Credit Regulator; and
- protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure.
This Privacy Notice outlines how we collect, use, process, disclose, transfer and retain your personal information.
We comply with the National Credit Act, 34 of 2005 and the Regulations thereto, as amended from time to time (“the NCA”), the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (“PoPIA”), governing your right to keep your personal information private.
We may process your personal information as part of our function to assist you in obtaining credit responsibly and protect you against reckless lending.
In this Privacy Notice, “Consumer Credit Information” means consumer credit information defined in Section 70 of the NCA.
2. OUR LEGAL BASIS FOR HANDLING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) allows personal information usage where necessary for legitimate purposes without undue adverse impact. Our processing activities are based on the compliance with an obligation imposed by law condition and on the legitimate interests condition.
3. HOW WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION
Maris IT Development limits the use and disclosure of personal information to the terms of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (NCA), Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (PoPIA) or any other applicable laws.
Credit reporting: We receive consumer credit information in credit reports from the primary credit bureaus TransUnion, XDS and Experian and provide this to you, together with an add-on service e.g., Criminal Checks and Matric and Academic Verifications.
Legal and regulatory: As required by the National Credit Regulator, we do not hold your information for longer than 72 hours. Accordingly, within this period, if you lodge a complaint about how we have used your personal information, we may provide this information to you or a regulator on request. However, for the most part, any complaints or enquiries from you or a regulator about how we’ve used your personal information, will be dealt with by the primary credit bureau from whom we received your consumer credit information.
4. THE KINDS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WE USE
Information in the credit reports we provide to you, includes:
- Identifying information,such as first name, surname, ID number, physical and postal address, contact numbers, marital status, spouse details, and current employer and occupation
- An account historyor payment profile is a 24-month record of all accounts with credit or service providers and a history of how you pay these accounts
- Enquiriesinclude a list of credit or service providers allowed by you or permitted in terms of the NCA to receive your credit report
- Public recordsinclude publicly available information as permitted by law, such as judgments, administration orders, sequestrations and rehabilitation
- Default datais a record of any failure to pay money owed
- Otherincludes any information permitted under the NCA
5. SOURCES FOR INFORMATION
We may collect your personal information, or obtain information originating from the following sources:
- A primary credit bureau
- An organ of state, a court or judicial officer
- Any person who supplies goods, services or utilities to consumers
- A person providing long-term and short-term insurance
- Entities involved in fraud investigation
- Educational institutions
- Debt collectors to whom a credit provider ceded or sold book debt
6. HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We keep your personal information for a maximum of 72 hours as directed by the National Credit Regulator. The key reason for retaining your information for only a short period of time, is that your information held on the primary credit bureaus changes constantly with updates from credit and data providers and therefore the information provided to you, may quickly become out-of-date.
Moreover, we do not store your information or use it for any other purpose.
7. YOUR CREDIT REPORT
It is important to know what your credit report looks like, so that you can apply for credit with confidence. It is also important to know which accounts are negatively affecting your credit score so that you can improve the payment of these accounts. When you request your own credit report you can see who has been making enquiries on your profile. This is important to make sure that you do not become a victim of fraud or identity theft.
8. HOW TO LODGE A COMPLAINT / DISPUTE YOUR CREDIT REPORT
If you believe and have evidence that any of the information on your credit report does not belong to you or has been inaccurately reflected, you have a right to dispute your credit report.
The dispute process is as follows:
- Contact any one of the primary credit bureaus listed in 9 below and provide them with the requested information.
- Once the information has been received and accepted by the credit bureau, you will be notified that you have lodged a dispute;
- An investigation will then take place. The credit or data provider is given the opportunity to respond to your dispute by providing evidence that the information on your credit profile is correct;
- If the information is found to be valid, the information will be kept on your credit profile. However, if the information is not denied by the credit provider or the credit provider agrees that the information is incorrect, the incorrect information will be removed from your credit profile within 20 business days;
- If you are not satisfied with the process at the credit bureau you are welcome to seek the assistance of the National Credit Regulator in the resolution of your dispute.
Should you have a dispute relating to POPIA, in the first instance, you are required to lodge this dispute with a primary credit bureau. Details of the Information Officers for each primary credit bureau are detailed on the CBA Website: www.cba.co.za If your dispute has not been satisfactorily concluded, please follow the process set out on the CBA website under the PoPIA tab.
9. FREE CREDIT REPORT FROM EACH OF THE PRIMARY CREDIT BUREAUS
You are entitled to a free copy of your own credit report from each of the following credit bureaus that hold consumer credit information once a year. Please request your free credit report directly from the relevant credit bureau.
