Protection of Company and Personal Information

INTRODUCTION
1.1. Vital Corporate Consulting -'Vital' respects your privacy and we are committed to keeping your personal information secure and confidential.
1.2. This privacy statement explains how we process the personal information we collect from you and also informs you of your rights in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, Act No. 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”). You have the right to be notified that your personal information is being collected, which is why this privacy statement has been brought to your attention and is important to you.
1.3. Important: If you use our services, you agree that we may process your personal information as explained under this Privacy Statement and interms of our Service Level Agreement with yourself . In the relevant agreement or terms and conditions pertaining to those services, you may opt to provide us with your consent to process your personal information and agree that we may process it for the purposes as described in such agreement or terms and conditions (in addition to the purposes described in this
privacy statement).

2. RESPONSIBLE PARTY AND OPERATOR
2.1. Vital is the only legal entity’s that will collect personal and Company information from you on behalf of a client (i.e. the responsible party) and will be the operator for purposes of your personal information. As the operator, we will ensure that your personal information is safeguarded in compliance with the requirements of POPIA.
2.2. This privacy statement applies Vital and all of its employees and contractors that are domiciled in South Africa. Vital address is:

14 Marlborough Cresent, Athlone, Durban North

PO Box 201111 Durban North

Tel : 27 31 5632856

POPIA Information Officer: Duncan Mac Nicol 27 31 563 2656 info@vitalconsulting.co.za

3. WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
3.1. Personal information is defined in POPIA and means information relating to an identifiable, living natural person,
and where it is applicable, an identifiable, existing juristic person. We “process” your personal information if we collect, use, store, make available, destroy, update, disclose, receive or otherwise deal with your personal information.
3.2. Depending on the type of business we conduct with you or the relationship you have with us, we may process the
following types of personal information, (the below is not intended to be an exhaustive list) :

Company information, including those of employees, suppliers and other clients as required for B-BBEE, Employment Equity or Skills Development (SETA) audit requirements .name
race (for employment purposes or as otherwise required by applicable law)
gender
marital status
nationality
age
language preference
date of birth
information relating to education, financial, criminal or employment history of a person
identifying numbers such as identity or passport number, tax identification numbers or tax reference numbers
e-mail address
physical address
telephone number.

4. FOR WHAT PURPOSE DO WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION?
4.1. In order for us to provide clients with services they have requested and to notify them of important changes to such services, we need to collect, use and disclose the personal information of clients, their representatives, controlling persons or entities, business contacts, staff of clients and service providers. We collect and use personal information in order to conclude a contract with clients and to carry out the obligations in terms of that contract
(including managing the account and complying with instructions and requests). We also process contact
information so that we can report to clients and keep clients informed of the status of any instruction.
4.2. We have regulatory obligations, including compliance with anti-money laundering legislation, to process your personal information. This includes verifying your identity or the identity of your beneficial owner and/or controlling persons.
4.3. We may use your personal or compnay information to pursue our legitimate and agreed interests such as to compile reports, to comply with requests for information from any internal or external auditor, or any regulatory or supervisory body, or to correspond with you.
4.4. You may refuse to provide us with your personal information in which case it is likely that we will not be able to provide you with a relevant service or would have to terminate our business relationship. The supply of certain items of personal information, especially those collected to comply with regulation, is legally mandatory.
4.5. We may further process your information if it is compatible with the purpose for which it was collected, for instance to:
4.5.1. Evaluate your application form or mandate;
4.5.2. Evaluate your current and future needs and to suggest further services to you;
4.5.3. Evaluate and improve the effectiveness of our services and offerings;
4.5.4. Process your marketing preferences (where you have unsubscribed from certain direct marketing
communications, keeping a record of your information and request to ensure that we do not send such
direct marketing to you again);
4.5.5. For operational purposes;
4.5.6. Verify your identity for security purposes;
4.5.7. Meet legal and regulatory requirements or industry codes to which we may be subject, for example comply with a lawful request for information received from a local or foreign law enforcement agency, court,government or tax collection agency;
4.5.8. Use in connection with legal proceedings;
4.5.9. Conduct our internal audit (including security) functions which allow us to monitor our systems and
processes. This protects us and you from fraud, identity theft and unauthorised access;
4.5.10. Conduct statistical and any operational, marketing, auditing, legal and record-keeping requirements;
4.5.11. Detect and prevent any fraud and money laundering and/or in the interest of security and crime prevention (which includes ongoing due diligence and sanction screening against any sanction list we may determine in our sole discretion);
4.5.12. Assess and resolve any complaint;
4.5.13. Perform any risk analysis or for purposes of risk management to you or our business in general;
4.5.14. Trace your contact information through a tracing agent if you are uncontactable and/or to comply with any regulation or conduct standard relating to unclaimed assets; and
4.5.15. Prevent or control the spread of any disease.

5 HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
5.1. Directly from you , the data subject: We will not collect your company / personal information without your consent, except where it is required or permitted by law. We collect most of the company /personal information we process directly from the data subject or an authorised representative of the data subject, for example when an application form is completed. You shall appoint the latter in writing.
5.2. From third party sources: We also collect or process personal information we obtain from third party sources or sources in the public domain. This may include, but is not limited to:
5.2.1. affiliates ;
5.2.2. client due diligence tools, and through identity verification and bank verification processes;
5.2.3. sanction screening tools (which may include any sanction list we may determine in our sole discretion);
5.2.4. collection of personal information by requesting information on source of funds;
5.2.5. credit and fraud checks;
5.2.6. consumer credit information as defined in the National Credit Act, Act No. 34 of 2005 from registered credit bureaux;
5.2.7. tracing agents; and
5.2.8. personal information as required for the purposes of forensic investigations of whatsoever nature.
5.3. During the course of our business relationship with a data subject and in the course of performing a financial service to that data subject, we may obtain financial information from product providers where we invested on behalf of that data subject, such as the value of the investment with such product provider.

6.WHO RECEIVES YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
6.1. The services we provide are of such a nature that it is often necessary that company /personal information needs to be shared with or transferred to third parties ( such as audit companies) in order to perform our services to clients. This is generally implicit in the service ( or explicit in terms of a service level agreement ) or because you requested us to transfer the personal information to the third party. We also need to transfer company /personal information to third parties from time to time for legal or regulatory reasons. We may disclose your company/ personal information to third parties for reasons set out in this privacy statement or where it is not unlawful to do so.
6.2. We may, depending on the type of service, transfer company/ personal information to: an auditor, a local or foreign regulator (including but not limited to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, Reserve Bank, South African Revenue Services, the Financial Intelligence Centre), a tax administrator, a legal advisor, a forensic investigation service (internal or external), a service provider providing administrative support services or accounting services to you or us. We will ensure that such third parties are restricted by obligations of confidentiality to only use the information for the required purpose and that they will apply strict security measures to the personal information we share with them.
6.3. We will also share company/ personal information for the purpose of client due diligence undertaken in compliance with anti- money laundering legislation with our responsible parties. We may share personal information within Vital for purposes of enhanced due diligence processes in compliance with anti-money laundering legislation to establish whether a client exists and has been verified.

7. THIRD PARTY TRANSFER
7.1. This privacy statement only applies to Vital in South Africa and your information will therefore primarily be processed in South Africa.
7.2. We may enter company/ personal information into our systems and the systems of our service providers and operators that may use technology or services in or outside South Africa. Our systems shall be secured by double authentication passwords/steps. Your personal information will be subject to secure ONE DRIVE cloud storage purposes or through the use of any of our websites, be transferred or processed outside of the Republic of South Africa.
7.3. Recipients of your information may be situated in countries which do not have data protection laws similar to South Africa. We will, however, use all reasonable endeavours to ensure that the contracts entered into with such third parties contain the necessary appropriate safeguards if personal information is processed outside South Africa or rely on other legally permitted safeguards.

8. MARKETING
8.1. We may contact you from time to time to inform you of similar services to the ones you are contracted for and that we think you may be interested in. We may also provide you with newsletters and market insights as part of our value-added client experience.
8.2. We do not and will not share your company or personal information with affiliates or other third parties .

9. YOUR RIGHTS AS A DATA SUBJECT
9.1. You have the right to have your company or personal information processed in accordance with the conditions for the lawful processing of personal information as set out in POPIA. You also have the rights as set out below which we need to make you aware of.
9.2. Right of Access
9.2.1 In terms of section 23 of POPIA, you are entitled to request us to:
9.2.1.1 confirm, free of charge, whether or not we hold personal information about you; and
9.2.1.2 provide a record or a description of the personal information we hold, including information about the identity of all the third parties, or categories of third parties who have, or have had, access to the personal information.

9.2.2 You will need to provide us with adequate proof of identity before we respond to a request. If you request a record, we will respond within a reasonable time. We may charge the fee under applicable law for providing copies of records to you.
9.3. Right to request correction or deletion
9.3.1 You may request us, in terms of section 24 of POPIA, to correct or delete personal information in our possession or under our control that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or obtained unlawfully. You may also request us to destroy or delete a record of personal information about you that we are no longer authorised to retain.
9.3.2 We will as soon as reasonably practicable correct, destroy or delete, as the case may be – unless we are required or entitled under applicable laws to keep the information and inform you that we have done so.
9.3.3 If we do not believe that the information requires correction, we will provide you with credible evidence in support of the information. If we cannot reach agreement with you, you may request us to attach to the information we hold the request for correction so that it can be read together.

9.4. Right to object to processing
9.4.1 Where we process your information to protect your legitimate interest or to pursue the legitimate interest of a third party to whom the information is supplied or our own legitimate interest, you may object at any time to the processing of your personal information for these purposes, on reasonable grounds relating to your situation, unless applicable law provides for such processing.
9.4.2 You may also object at any time to the processing of your personal information for purposes of direct marketing or the receipt of direct marketing through unsolicited electronic communication.
9.5. Remedies for data subjects.
You have the right to complain to the Information Regulator as set out in paragraph 13 b.

10. HOW LONG DO WE RETAIN YOUR COMPANY/ PERSONAL INFORMATION?
10.1. We generally only keep your company personal information on our records for as long as we need it to provide you with services and to meet legal requirements related to record-keeping.
10.2. We will keep your company or personal information for as long as:
10.2.1. the law requires us to keep it;
10.2.2. a contract we have with you requires us to keep it;
10.2.3. you have consented to us keeping it;
10.2.4. we reasonably require it to achieve purposes set out in our contract with you or this policy;
10.2.5. we require it for our lawful business purposes.
10.3. We may also keep your personal information for historical, statistical or research purposes if appropriate safeguards are in place. We may keep your personal information for longer if there is litigation or an investigation, or any tax or regulatory query.
10.4. If we have to keep information for longer periods than set out above (for example if it cannot be safely destructed), we will only process it for purposes of storage or for purposes of proof. We will also restrict access and processing of such information.

11. SECURITY BREACHES
In the event of a security compromise where your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify you directly as soon possible as provided for in POPIA.

12. AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING
An automated decision is when your personal information is analysed to form a profile of a person or category of persons to make a decision without human intervention. We do not make automated decisions. If we make any automated decisions about you in future, you will have the right to query any decisions made and we will provide reasons for the decisions as far as reasonably possible

13. THE INFORMATION REGULATOR
13.1. You may lay a complaint to the Information Regulator. Any person may submit a complaint to the Information Regulatory in the prescribed manner and form alleging interference with the protection of the personal information of a data subject. A data subject may also submit a complaint in respect of a determination of an adjudicator.
13.2. The address of the Information Regulator is as follows:
The Information Regulator
27 Stiemens Street,
Braamfontein,
Johannesburg,
2017
Complaints email: complaints.IR@justice.gov.za
General enquiries email: inforeg@justice.gov.za.

14. UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT
This privacy statement is dated as of June 2021. We may update the privacy statement from time to time. The current privacy statement will be available on our website or available upon request from our office. Please check this website on a regular basis.

POPIA Manual

Back Home