Privacy Statement - Clients

Introduction

For purposes of this Policy:

“Applicable Laws” means, local, foreign and international laws, regulations, treaties and codes, for example the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001, and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of the United States of America;

"Client" or “you” means any prospective, new or existing client of the DBSA; and

"DBSA", "Bank" or “we” means the Development Bank of Southern Africa Limited.

How to contact us

If you have any comments or questions about this Policy please contact the Deputy Information Officer at POPIA@DBSA.ORG 

Amendment of this Policy

We may amend this Policy from time to time for any of the following reasons:

• To provide for the introduction of new systems, methods of operation, services, products, property offerings or facilities;
• To reflect an actual or expected change in market conditions or general banking or financial services, lending or property practices;
• To comply with changes to any legal or regulatory requirement;
• To ensure that our Policy is clearer and more favourable to you;
• To rectify any mistake that might be discovered from time to time; and/or
• For any other reason which we, in its sole discretion, may deem reasonable or necessary.

Any such amendment will come into effect and become part of any agreement you have with the DBSA when notice is given to you of the change by publication on our website. It is your responsibility to check the website often.

Privacy and indemnity

DBSA takes your privacy and the protection of your personal information very seriously, and we will only use your personal information in accordance with this Policy and Applicable Laws. It is important that you take all necessary and appropriate steps to protect your personal information yourself (for example, by ensuring that all passwords and access codes are kept secure).

We have implemented reasonable technical and operational measures to keep your personal information secure.

You hereby indemnify and hold DBSA harmless from any loss, damages or injury that you may incur as a result of any unintentional disclosures of your personal information to unauthorised persons or the provision of incorrect or incomplete personal information to DBSA.

Information which we may collect about you

• Your name, address, contact details, date of birth, place of birth, identity number, registration number passport number, bank details, details about your employment, tax number and financial information;
• Information about your beneficial owner (if applicable):
• Records of correspondence or enquiries from you or anyone acting on your behalf;
• Details of any transactions, including but not limited to the following transactions: wholesale funding for and to monitor the implementation of development projects and programmes; lending or advancing money to you for purposes of engaging in or proposing to engage in development projects and programmes in your region; holding, managing, developing, letting, hiring, buying, subscribing to, or otherwise acquiring, or selling or otherwise disposing of, hypothecating or otherwise dealing in movable or immovable property; drawing, accepting or endorsing negotiable instruments; guaranteeing any undertaken given in relation to financing by us; receiving grants and donations, issuing debentures or debenture stock or otherwise to raise wholesale loans, or borrowing money; acting as agent or trustee, manager or secretary of any person, national or international private or public body; establishing, anywhere in the Republic of South Africa, any juristic person capable of exercising, performing or carrying out such powers, functions and duties as may or shall be exercised, performed or carried out by the Bank; providing technical and other assistance and giving advice, information and guidance, and entering into any contract or performing any act, whether within the Republic or elsewhere, which may promote the attainment of the objects of the Bank.
• Details of contracts, sales or leases you carry out with us;
• Your credit history, where you have applied for credit or where we have agreed to provide credit to you;
• Sensitive or special categories of personal information, including biometric information, such as images, fingerprints and voiceprints.

We may require you to provide additional personal and tax-related information, in order for us to meet our legal or regulatory obligations. For tax reporting purposes, we may collect information belonging to persons who have authority or effective control over your relationship with us (this includes a person with power of attorney and for some passive entities, all the controlling persons of such entity). We may collect this information from you or such other persons.

Where you provide us with the personal information of third parties you should take steps to inform the third party that you need to disclose their details to us, identifying us. We will process their personal information in accordance with this Policy.

How we collect information

You may provide personal information to us either directly or indirectly (through an agent acting on your behalf, an independent financial advisor or an introducer), by applying  for our products and services or requesting further information about our products and services, whether in writing, through our website, over the telephone or any other means.

We may also collect your personal information from your appointed agent, Financial Services Provider, any regulator, or other third party that may hold such information.

In instances where you have applied for credit or where we have agreed to provide credit to you, we may conduct searches at credit bureaus. Details of our searches will be kept by the credit bureau and will be available to other businesses that conduct searches with that agency for the purposes of meeting our regulatory obligations, credit assessments, debt recovery, management of your  facilities or funding, prevention of money laundering and fraud and statistical analysis. In instances where you apply for credit, we will tell you, where permitted by law, if we make a decision about you relating to your credit scoring or eligibility for our products or services based solely on an automated decision-making process. You will be given a reasonable opportunity if permitted by law or code of conduct to make representations about a decision.

Use of information collected

We may use, transfer and disclose your personal information for the purposes of:

• Providing you with the services, products or offerings you have requested, and notifying you about important changes to these services, products or offerings;
• Managing your facilities, investment, contractual arrangement or relationship and complying with your instructions or requests;
• Complying with your instructions;
• Detecting and preventing fraud and money laundering and/or in the interest of security and crime prevention;
• Assessing and dealing with complaints and requests;
• Operational, marketing, auditing, legal and record keeping requirements;
• Conducting sanctions and politically exposed person screening against any relevant list which DBSA may in its sole discretion determine;
• Verifying your identity or the identify of your beneficial owner (if applicable);
• Taking credit decisions where you have applied for credit or where we have agreed to provide credit to you;
• Requesting your consumer credit reports or those of any other security provider from one or more credit reporting agency in connection with any agreement between you and DBSA and you direct us to do so, where applicable;
• Use your credit score or other electronic data-check mechanisms when considering any application and when providing you with services and products, and verifying any information provided by you and making whatever enquiries we deem necessary from any source whatsoever to establish your creditworthiness, where applicable;
• To transfer or process your personal information outside of the Republic of South Africa to such countries that may not offer the same level of data protection as the Republic of South Africa, including for cloud storage purposes and the use of any of our websites;
• Complying with Applicable Laws, including lawful requests for information received from local or foreign law enforcement, government and tax collection agencies;
• Recording and/or monitoring your telephone calls and electronic communications to/with DBSA in order to accurately carry out your instructions and requests, to use as evidence and in the interests of crime prevention;
• Conducting market research and providing you with information about DBSA’s products or services from time to time via email, telephone or other means (for example, events);
• Where you have unsubscribed from certain direct marketing communications, for the purposes of ensuring that we do not sent such direct marketing to you again;
• To disclose your personal information to third parties for reasons set out in this Policy or where it is not unlawful to do so;
• To comply with an obligation imposed by inter-bank agreements and payment clearing rules;
• To monitor, keep record of and have access to all forms of correspondence or communications received by or sent from DBSA or any of its employees, agents or contractors, including monitoring, recording and using as evidence all telephone communications between you and DBSA; and
• Improving or evaluating the effectiveness of DBSA’s business or products, services or offerings.

We may from time to time contact you about services, products and offerings available from DBSA, which we believe may be of interest to you, by email, phone, text or other electronic means, unless you have unsubscribed from receiving such communications. You can unsubscribe from receiving such communications by clicking here.

Disclosure of your information

Your personal information may be shared with our agents and sub-contractors, and selected third parties who process the information on our behalf.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties when we are entitled or obliged to do so under Applicable Law, including to:

• assess and monitor any of your applications for DBSA products or services, including the risk involved to comply with Applicable Laws;
• determine which products and services which may be of interest to you and/or to send you information about such products and services, unless you object or choose not to receive such communications;
• expedite approval of funding and granting of facilities) and facilitate the granting of further funding or facilities);
• manage additional benefits associated with funding or a facility);
• make decisions regarding the extension of credit;
• keep your usual contact within DBSA informed of the progress of any new applications for new funding and facilities, and the other way around;
• have a better understanding of your circumstances and needs to provide and improve DBSA’s products and services;
• comply with Applicable Laws requiring DBSA and/or any third party to collect information about an your tax residency, which DBSA may, at time, be obliged to report to SARS (for example, if you are a US Entity and/or have tax residency outside of South Africa, or where you fail to provide tax related information or where the self-certification provided by you is incorrect or incomplete);
• prevent, detect and report fraud and criminal activities, and to identify the proceeds of unlawful activities and the combatting of crime; and
• comply with requests from third parties, including a regulator or supervisory authority, including those in foreign jurisdictions, if DBSA in required to do so in terms of Applicable Laws; or to protect the rights, property or safety of the DBSA, Clients or other third parties.

We may transfer your information to an agent, sub-contractor or third party who carries on business in another country, including one which may not have data protection laws similar to those of the Republic. If this happens, we will ensure that anyone to whom we pass your information agrees to treat your information with the same level of protection as if we were dealing with it.

If you do not wish us to disclose this information to third parties, please contact us at the contact details set out above. We may, however, not be able to provide products or services to you if such disclosure is necessary.

Retention of your information

We may retain your personal information indefinitely, unless you object, in which case we will only retain it if we are permitted or required to do so in terms of Applicable Laws. However, as a general rule, we will retain your information in accordance with retention periods set out in Applicable Laws, unless we need to retain it for longer for a lawful purpose.

Access to, correction and deletion of your personal information

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”) or about third parties where your rights are affected by such information under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (“PAIA”). Fees to obtain a copy or a description of such personal information are prescribed in terms of PAIA. Confirmation of whether or not we hold personal information about you may be requested free of charge.

You may request the correction of personal information DBSA holds about you. Please ensure that the information we hold about you is complete, accurate and up to date. If you fail to keep your information updated, or if your information is incorrect, DBSA may limit the products and services offered to you or elect not to provide funding or facilities to you. Depending on the nature of the change, and Applicable Laws, we may be required to report the information to a tax authority or third-party financial institutions which are withholding agents.

You have a right in certain circumstances to request the destruction or deletion of and, where applicable, to obtain restriction on the processing of personal information held about you. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact us using the contact details set out above.

You have a right to object on reasonable grounds to the processing of your personal information.

For more information in this regard please read our PAIA manual.

Complaints

Should you believe that we have utilised your personal information contrary to Applicable Laws, you undertake to first attempt to resolve any concerns with us.

If you are not satisfied with such process, you may have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator, using the contact details listed below:

Tel: 012 406 4818

Fax: 086 500 3351

Email: inforeg@justice.gov.za.