Privacy Statement

BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited and BlackRock Asset Management Australia Limited (collectively known as ‘BlackRock Australia’) are Australian Financial Services Licensees specialising in providing quality investment management products and services.

Protecting your personal information is important
BlackRock Australia respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your privacy. We are bound by, and committed to supporting, the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

This Privacy Statement explains the way we collect, maintain and handle your personal information according to the NPPs. In this Privacy Statement, these terms have the following meanings:
“Personal Information” means information about you from which you can be reasonably identified.
“we”, “us” and “our” means BlackRock Australia.

What personal information do we collect?
In the course of our activities, we collect and hold personal information about you. We will only collect personal information that is necessary to provide our products and/or services to you, including information needed to comply with legal and/or regulatory requirements. If we do not obtain all the information we need from you, we may not be able to provide you with our products and/or services.

We will only ask another person (such as your financial adviser) for information about you if it is not reasonably practical to obtain that information directly from you, and it is reasonable in the circumstances to do so.

Does BlackRock Australia collect sensitive information?
‘Sensitive information’ means information or opinion about your racial or ethnic origin; or political opinions; or membership of a political association; or religious beliefs or affiliations; or philosophical beliefs; or membership of a professional or trade association; or membership of a trade union; or sexual preferences or practices; or criminal record; or health information.

BlackRock Australia does not typically collect sensitive information. However, in the event we consider its collection necessary, we will seek your prior consent.

How is your personal information used?
BlackRock Australia is in the business of investment management. As such, we will only use your personal information for the purpose of providing you with our products and/or services. In managing your investment, we will use your personal information to:

• assess your application and provide our products and/or services to you; 
• communicate with you in relation to your investment; 
• monitor, audit, evaluate and otherwise administer our products and/or services; and 
• effect purchases and sales of assets and provide related facilities and services in the management of your investment.

We may also use your personal information to offer you our other products and/or services which we expect may interest you.

With whom does BlackRock Australia share your personal information?
We may disclose your personal information to others in the following circumstances: 

• to service providers, such as your financial adviser, custodian or consultant. If a financial adviser’s stamp appears on your application form or if you otherwise inform us of having a financial adviser, we may supply your financial adviser with information about your accounts unless you instruct us otherwise in writing;
• where required, or allowed under law, or in connection with legal proceedings;
• to a related company, provided such information is not sensitive and provided the recipient company complies with similar privacy requirements; or 
• with your prior consent.

We will not sell your personal information to other organisations. Nor will we provide organisations outside the BlackRock group with your personal information for purposes unrelated to the management of your investment.

Will your personal information be kept accurate, complete and up to date?

We will endeavour to ensure your personal information is kept accurate, complete and up to date. If you feel your personal information is not accurate, complete or up to date, please notify us and we will take reasonable steps to ensure it is corrected. You can notify us by writing to our Client Service team at Level 18, 120 Collins Street, Melbourne (VIC) 3000 or by calling our Client Services Centre on 1300 366 100.

Is your personal information secure?
We will keep your personal information secure from misuse or loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Access to and the use of personal information is regulated within BlackRock to prevent misuse or unlawful disclosure of the information. We use security procedures such as encryption, firewalls, intrusion detection and anti virus technology to prevent unauthorised access. We also use valid log-in identification and password based security to achieve electronic information security.

We retain information for so long as may be necessary to respond to issues that may arise at a later date, and longer in appropriate cases where required by law. When personal information is no longer required by us, it is destroyed.

Can you access your personal information?
You may contact us by mail, phone, fax or email and request access to your information. We encourage you to contact our Privacy Officer directly (details below) if you so wish. We may ask you to verify your identity before we give you access. In normal circumstances we will give you full access to your information. However, there may at times be some legal reason to deny access. If access is denied we will tell you why.

There may be some charge to you to access your information depending on the ease of its retrieval. We will advise you of the cost when you seek the information.

Can you deal with BlackRock anonymously?
We are a financial services provider, and as such, are subject to strict prudential and regulatory requirements. We thus do not provide our products and/or services to clients on an anonymous basis.

Will BlackRock give your information to an entity in a foreign country?
We may share your personal information with related companies within the BlackRock group, which includes entities in a foreign country. However, we will not share your personal information with an entity in a foreign country if we believe that doing so would be inconsistent with your privacy rights in Australia.

Dealing with BlackRock online
We may use “cookies” to help us tailor our website to better suit your needs (eg, we may use cookies to enable us to save any personal preferences indicated by you) and to provide a more effective route to various components of our website.

A cookie is a small data file that contains information about your visit to our website. This information is provided by your computer during your first visit to our website. Our server records this information in a text file and stores this file on your hard drive. When you visit our website again, our server looks for the cookie and may structure itself based on the information contained in the cookie. A cookie only identifies your computer when you visit our web site; it does not identify you.

Who can you contact at BlackRock?
If you have any queries or concerns about your privacy, please contact our Privacy Officer via the following:

Phone: 1300 366 100
Email: clientservices.aus@blackrock.com
Mail: Level 18/120 Collins Street, Melbourne (VIC) 3000

Please address all written requests: ‘Attention: Privacy Officer’
Otherwise, all requests for access to personal information will be forwarded to our Privacy Officer.