We are with you in valuing your privacy and will always work hard to look after the information you entrust to us. This is our Southern Cross Medical Care Society (“Southern Cross”) Privacy Statement and explains the ways we routinely deal with your information. During your relationship with us we may tell you more about how we will handle your information.

Please read this Privacy Statement carefully. By beginning an application for a Southern Cross health insurance policy – either yourself or through someone acting on your behalf – or by being added as an authorised caller or enduring power of attorney on a policy, you authorise us to collect, use and disclose your personal and/or health information in accordance with this Privacy Statement. We may also update this statement, so please check back from time to time.

We use your information to be with you when you need us most – when you apply for a policy and when you want to claim. We also use your information to tell you about products or services we think you’d be interested in and to help us personalise and improve your experience with us and other Southern Cross Group businesses.

This applies whether we collect your information directly from you or indirectly from another source.

We may use your information:

• to consider your eligibility for cover under the policy and any specific terms applying to the policy (including any pre-existing conditions),
• to administer the policy and your membership with us including annual general meetings,
• to process, investigate and review quotes, join journeys, enquiries, prior approvals and any claims made in connection with your policy or prospective cover
• to help administer products and services you take up with other Southern Cross branded businesses,
• to understand, improve and personalise your experience with us and with other Southern Cross branded businesses,
• for marketing, including telling you about products, services and offers from us, other Southern Cross branded businesses, or our partners. We may do this by contacting you directly or via another business. We also use advertising technologies for targeted online advertising to provide relevant messages to you and others on our own and third parties’ websites. You can opt out by contacting us on 0800 800 181 or by clicking the unsubscribe function included in our electronic marketing communications,
• to develop and improve what we offer. This includes products, partnerships, systems, and member outcomes, and to meet audit and compliance requirements. We use anonymised or de-identified data to do this wherever possible and always when we present the results,
• to prevent, detect, or investigate fraud or suspected fraud, to conduct research and analysis to assist with any of the above purposes, where permitted or required by law.

We will endeavour to collect personal and/or health information about you and others covered by your policy directly from you where possible. However, where this is not possible or practical, we may collect personal information about you, or others covered by your policy, indirectly from third parties. This means we may collect information from someone else or other organisations, as outlined below.

This section sets out the parties we collect your information from and disclose it to:

• The policyholder can submit or view information about anyone covered on their policy, including details of plan change quotes, prior approvals and claims submitted by anyone on the policy
• The spouse or partner of the policyholder (if covered by the policy) can update some policy details, submit and view most prior approvals, and access information about others on the policy on request
• The policyholder may authorise third parties to access information about anyone covered under the policy. If you’re not the policyholder, you can only authorise access to your own information
• We undertake assessments of existing coverage when individuals are added to a policy. We may share policy coverage information with interested parties (existing and new policyholders), including where there is dual coverage
• When we receive a prior approval or claim we exchange information with the provider or facility providing the health service or treatment. This is to assess, review or assist with administration of the prior approval or claim. If we need information from your GP or another health provider to assess a prior approval or claim, we will let you know
• Affiliated Providers and Easy Claim Providers can access limited policy details to help accurately submit prior approvals and claims directly to us on your behalf
• Financial and Insurance Advisers that the policyholder has authorised - including those who advise on a work scheme the policyholder is part of - can access information about everyone covered on the policy to enable them to provide you with their services
• Other Southern Cross Group businesses may exchange information with Southern Cross for the purposes listed in this statement, including but not limited to contact details, demographic information, the products, services or partner offers you have taken up, and your communication preferences. No medical declarations or claims information will be exchanged without your consent
• We exchange limited identifiable information with the administrators of a work or association scheme to administer the scheme, including determining eligibility, applying discounts and subsidies. We will never share your identifiable health or claims information. We may share aggregated and de-identified data with work scheme administrators for the purpose of demonstrating policy utilisation and scheme analytics
• If your prior approval or claim appears to relate to an accident or treatment injury, we may check whether there is an ACC claim for the same matter. We will get your consent before exchanging any further information with ACC
• Trusted partners may let us know when you have taken up a member offer or discount so we can confirm eligibility, administer the offer and understand overall uptake. We may tell you more when you take up a particular partner offer or discount
• We collect information from you when you communicate with us including recordings of all incoming and outgoing phone calls with you
• We may also collect information about you from other parties, where you have given your consent or where this is permitted or required by law
• When you use our websites or Southern Cross app, we use cookies and similar technologies to help our services function properly, keep them secure, remember your preferences as well as to understand how they are used
• Some cookies are essential for our websites and apps to work, while others help us improve performance and user experience. You can control how cookies are used through your browser settings, however this may impact your ability to access all features of our website. For more information about the cookies we use and how to manage them, please see our Cookies Policy.

If you provide us with, or authorise us to collect and/or use personal and/or health information about another person, you confirm that they have authorised you to provide us, or authorised us to collect and/or use, their personal information in accordance with this Privacy Statement and that you have informed them of the contents of this Privacy Statement prior to providing us with their information.

We use technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to improve our products, services, and your experience as a member. We may use AI to help transcribe and analyse calls, check and improve draft scripting, and support data analysis for new insights. All content and outputs from AI tools are reviewed and approved before being used.

While AI tools may use data entered to improve their predictions, we ensure your personal information is protected and not shared with unauthorised third parties. We maintain strong privacy and security controls at all times.

From time to time, Southern Cross may send you marketing and other information by email or text. If you have provided your email address or mobile phone number, we take this as your implied consent for this. You can opt out of receiving these messages or your data being used for third party platform messages by contacting us on 0800 800 181 or by clicking the unsubscribe function included in our electronic marketing communications.

We regularly review, update safeguards and raise awareness about keeping the information we hold secure. We carefully screen other businesses that carry out services on our behalf (eg, mailing houses, research and insight agencies, and information technology providers) to ensure they meet our data protection standards.

If you have any questions about how we handle your information, or our Privacy Statement, please contact us on 0800 800 181. Your information is collected and held by Southern Cross Medical Care Society, Level 1, Te Kupenga, 155 Fanshawe Street, Auckland City 1010.