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Rule
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Application of rule
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Does the Code apply?
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Yes. BIC, as Novel Investments’ agent, will collect and use biometric information for biometric verification (live selfie video used for facial recognition). Novel Investments is responsible under the Privacy Act.
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Rule 1: Purpose for collection
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Novel Investments’ lawful purpose is to comply with a legal obligation to verify client identities.
Novel Investments determines that biometric processing is necessary for that lawful purpose. In particular:
- It’s effective: There is a clear link between the biometric processing and Novel Investments’ lawful purpose. Novel Investments obtained evidence such as statistics and test performance data from BIC that gives Novel Investments confidence that the biometric processing will be effective in accurately verifying client identities.
- Alternatives: Novel Investments researched different options for verifying client identities. They are satisfied that the accuracy and efficiency of the biometric based verification, including the advantage of having a mechanism to verify identities remotely, means that there is no reasonable alternative that would be as effective at verifying identities, especially in light of other manual solutions that they have assessed as having more overall privacy risk. However, a manual verification process will be kept as a back-up option where a new customer has difficulty using BIC’s service or is sensitive about the processing of their biometric information. Manual verification will require customers to travel to one of Novel Investments’ offices in person.
Novel Investments will adopt reasonable privacy safeguards, including:
- Obtaining individual authorisation and providing an alternative to biometric processing to support individual choice.
- Having sufficient assurances (e.g. through contract obligations) that BIC uses best practice security safeguards.
- Monitoring accuracy and performance (e.g. false rejection and acceptance rates, failure to enrol rates).
- Deleting the live selfie as soon as the client’s identity is verified.
- Liveness check to prevent spoofing
Novel Investments assesses proportionality:
- The residual privacy risk as low based on:
- Highly accurate system with limited, targeted collection. The live selfie will be deleted as soon as identity is verified.
- Individual authorisation will be sought and a manual, in-person alternative will be available.
- Low risk of bias, low risk of chilling effect on protected rights.
- Implementation of the privacy safeguards above.
- The biometric verification system provides a medium to high benefit that outweighs the privacy risk based on the benefit to Novel Investments in having a more robust, quick, convenient and cost-effective way of verifying client identities (including verifying remotely). This is a private benefit to Novel Investments that substantially outweighs the low privacy risk
Novel Investments considers cultural impacts on Māori:
- Novel Investments confirms BIC’s accuracy rates for Māori clients are comparable to non-Māori.
- Novel Investments designs authorisation to comply with the standard of free, prior and informed consent to mitigate potential cultural impacts, including having an alternative to biometric processing available – i.e. choosing manual verification in person.
- Novel Investments chose BIC over another provider because BIC stores all biometric information on cloud storage services with servers in New Zealand, and this option better reflects the principles of Māori data sovereignty.
Overall: The biometric processing is proportionate due to low privacy risk/impact, clear benefits to the clients and the mitigation of impacts/effects on Māori clients.
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Rule 2: source of biometric information
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Novel Investments is collecting biometric information directly from the individual. Even though Novel Investments is engaging a third-party provider, because BIC is acting as Novel Investments’ agent, this is still considered direct collection and complies with rule 2.
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Rule 3: collection of information from individual
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Novel Investments will meet the rule 3 requirements when the client is first onboarded, using a plain language written statement that is included as part of the client application and verbally going through the minimum notification matters (what biometric information and why they collect it, whether there’s an alternative, and where more information can be found).
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Rule 4: manner of collection
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Novel Investments is not breaking any laws in the way it collects the biometric information (it’s lawful). It considers its manner of collection is fair and not unreasonably intrusive, particularly because they seek individual authorisation and offer an alternative to the biometric verification.
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Rule 5: Storage and security of biometric information
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Novel Investments chose BIC because BIC uses best practice security safeguards, such as immediate deletion of biometric information that is not required to be kept, and technical safeguards like encryption of biometric information that is not deleted.
Novel Investments also ensures that it has contractual mechanisms in place to give it confidence that the storage and security practices of BIC meet Novel Investments’ requirements. Novel Investments conducts regular audits and assurance checks to confirm the security safeguards used by BIC remain appropriate.
See our Security and Access controls guidance in Poupou Matatapu and our rule 5 guidance for more information on storage and security of information.
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Rule 6: Access to biometric information
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Novel Investments will comply with requests from clients to access their biometric information.
Upon request, it will confirm if it holds any biometric information about an individual. Because the live selfie will be deleted as soon as the client’s identity is verified, in general Novel Investments will confirm that it only holds a copy of the individual’s identity document (if this is still held) and a record of the fact that the client’s identity was confirmed by BIC through the biometric verification process.
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Rule 7: Correction of biometric information
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Novel Investments will comply with requests to correct biometric information. Novel Investments ensures that its arrangement with BIC will allow it to access and correct information in a timely manner, including the ability to add a statement of correction from a customer.
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Rule 8: Accuracy, etc, of biometric information to be checked before use or disclosure
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Novel Investments has researched the accuracy of BIC’s matching process and determined it is acceptable for Novel Investments’ purposes (extremely low percentage of false verifications). However, some false rejections (false negatives) may still occur, so Novel Investments ensures there are ways for customers to flag if their identity verification is inaccurately rejected.
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Rule 9: Retention of biometric information
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The live selfie will be deleted as soon as the identity is verified. Other biometric information will only be retained for as long as required to comply with Novel Investments’ legal obligation to verify customer identities.
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Rule 10: Limits on use of information
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Novel Investments ensures it only uses the biometric information for the purpose of verifying customer identities and no other purpose, unless an exception applies.
The limits on biometric categorisation in rule 10 are not applicable as Novel Investments is carrying out verification not categorisation.
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Rule 11: Limits on disclosure of biometric information
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Novel Investments (or its agent BIC) will not share the client’s biometric information with any other organisation (unless an exception applies).
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Rule 12: Disclosure of biometric information outside New Zealand
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Novel Investments (or its agent BIC) will not disclose their client’s biometric information outside New Zealand.
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Rule 13: Unique identifiers
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Novel Investments is not assigning a biometric template to clients as their unique identifier, so rule 13 is not engaged.
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