To achieve the client’s financial needs, goals, and objectives, the financial adviser must collect and use information, including personal information as defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013. Personal information means information that alone or jointly with other factors identifies you as a person. This includes information such as your name, contact details, telephone number, biometric information, registration number, and any other information we need to collect.

To enable the financial adviser to render financial services for certain financial products, the financial adviser may require special personal information to achieve the client’s objectives. Special personal information includes, but is not limited to, information concerning a child and personal information concerning the race or ethnic origin, health, or criminal behaviour of a client.

Elysian Financial Wellness, its financial advisers, and employees treat all personal information they collect as private and confidential.

Right to change this privacy statement

We may change this privacy statement to align with changes in the law or changes in technology that impact how we process your personal information. We will publish all changes that describe our new practices on our websites, and the latest version will replace previous versions.

Collection of personal information

Personal information is collected directly from you and may be collected indirectly from other external sources for purposes of fulfilling our regulatory and financial services statutory obligations. Examples of other sources include:

• Regulators. These regulators may be inside or outside South Africa;
• World sanctions lists and World-check, which include media sources such as newspapers, social media, and broadcast news;
• Law enforcement agencies such as the South African Police Service;
• Credit bureaus;
• Our product and service providers; and/or
• Verification agencies.

Why do we collect personal information?

We collect your personal information for a number of reasons, including the following:

• To analyse your suitability for the products and services you apply for;
• To gather/collect/analyse data for business intelligence;
• To monitor financial sector trends and emerging market conduct risks; and/or
• To manage third-party relationships.

What personal information do we collect?

Each of our financial advisers collects and processes different attributes of your personal information at specific points of the financial planning process to fulfil a mandate or for internal business purposes.

You will learn more about the type of personal information we collect and process below:

• Identifying number (employee number, company registration numbers, ID number);
• Email addresses, physical address, telephone number;
• Names, surnames, marital status, nationality, sexual orientation, age, physical health status, mental health status, well-being, disability status, language, birthplace, date of birth. Information on your race, ethnic or social origin, criminal record/proceedings; and/or
• Education, medical, financial, and employment information.

We may not be able to carry out our mandate and provide financial services to our clients without your personal information.

For how long do we store personal information?

• As long as necessary to enable your financial adviser to render financial services to you; and
• As long as any law or regulations relevant to the financial services industry prescribe the recordkeeping period.

The use of third parties

We will from time to time share your personal information with third parties. We will disclose your personal information only if:

• It is necessary to comply with our regulatory obligations and financial services laws;
• For business purposes;
• We have a public duty to disclose the information;
• Your legitimate interests require disclosure; and
• You have provided consent for us to disclose your information.

These third parties may include but are not limited to:

• Regulators and the FAIS Ombud;
• Other regulators;
• Law enforcement agencies; and
• Verification agents.

Where appropriate, we request the third parties whom we share information with to take adequate measures and comply with applicable data protection laws and protect the information we are disclosing to them. We do this through contractual arrangements with these third parties. We also take internal measures to ensure that the third parties we appoint have appropriate measures to protect the information we provide to them.

Your rights

As a client, you have rights that you can exercise in relation to the personal information we hold about you. You can exercise your right to:

• Request access to the information we hold about you. We may, if allowed by law, charge a fee for this;
• Request correction and updates of the personal information we hold about you;
• Object to the way in which we use personal information about you;
• Request the deletion of your personal information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading, or obtained unlawfully, or where we are no longer authorised to keep such information;
• Complain to us about the way we use your personal information. If you are not satisfied with how we handle your complaint, you can lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator.

It is important to note that the rights are not absolute and must be balanced against other competing rights. We may also rely on certain exceptions that may impact your rights, for example, your right to object or the right of access to information. We will only do this where the interest we are mandated to protect outweighs to a substantial degree interference with your privacy. Where possible in terms of law, we will explain the exception we are relying on and its impact on your rights.

Our security practices

Our security systems and controls are designed to maintain confidentiality, prevent loss, unauthorised access, and damage to information by unauthorised parties. Our cybersecurity strategy is aligned with industry-standard frameworks to ensure effective cybersecurity risk management for the organisation. We conduct continuous security vulnerability assessments to improve our security posture and provide assurance to all our stakeholders.

Use of cookies on website

We use cookie technology on our website. Cookies are small files that are stored on a user's computer when you use our website. We have nonessential cookies that enable us to distinguish users, and strict transport security which allows a website to declare itself a secure host.

Use and monitoring of electronic communications

It is important that we keep the public abreast of any development that has a public interest. As such, we communicate with you and the public using different channels, including social media.

Retention of personal information

Personal information is retained and destroyed as required or authorised by law, and for defined purposes related to the activities of Elysian Financial Wellness.

How to contact us

To object to the processing of your personal information, kindly contact us at info@elysianfs.za.