Privacy

Your information stays yours

What OwnBetter collects, why, and who can see it. Nothing about you is shared with a retailer, insurer, adviser or trade until you ask for offers and see exactly what is included.

Last updated 23 September 2026

Who we are

OwnBetter Limited ("OwnBetter", "we") runs ownbetter.co.nz. We are a New Zealand company and we handle personal information under the Privacy Act 2020 and its Information Privacy Principles.

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy go to our privacy officer at [email protected].

What we collect

Only what the product needs to work for you:

  • Your account — email address, name and password. Passwords are held by our sign-in provider, never by us in readable form.
  • Your properties — the properties you confirm as yours, and anything you add about them: occupancy, notes, photos and 3D scans.
  • Your bills and documents — bills, invoices, policy schedules and other files you upload, and the details read from them.
  • Your services — electricity and gas ICP numbers, internet connections, insurance policies, loans and the accounts they sit under.
  • People you work with — contacts you add, and the tradespeople, advisers and suppliers you deal with through us.
  • Payments — what you ordered and whether it was paid. Card details are handled by Stripe and never reach us.
  • How the site is used — server logs of requests (address, time, page) kept to run and secure the service.

Public register information

To find the properties that are yours, we match against public registers — most importantly Land Information New Zealand's record of titles and their registered owners. Owner names from those registers are personal information, supplied to us under LINZ's licence for personal data.

We treat them accordingly: owner names are not shown on public property pages, are kept out of search engines, and are only shown to a signed-in person in the course of confirming their own properties. If you would like your name removed from what we hold, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

How we use it

  • To show you your properties, what they cost to run, and what is coming up.
  • To compare your plans, rates and policies against the market.
  • To send the requests you choose to make — for quotes, offers or reports — and the replies to them.
  • To send account email: sign-in codes, receipts, and reminders you have asked for.
  • To keep the service secure, fix faults, and meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Who we share it with

Providers see nothing until you ask. When you request offers or quotes, the advisers, lenders or trades taking part see the details you selected for that request. Your name, contact details and exact address stay hidden until you accept one of them.

People you invite. If you share a property or portfolio, the people you invite see what you shared with them, and you can remove them at any time.

Companies that run parts of the service for us, under contract and only for that purpose: Amazon Web Services (hosting, sign-in, storage and document reading), Stripe (payments), Postmark (email) and Google (maps, Street View and solar estimates for an address).

We will also disclose information where the law requires it.

Reading your documents

When you upload a bill, policy or other document, we use an AI model to read it and fill in the details for you — the supplier, the amounts, the dates, what a policy covers. The model runs on Amazon Web Services under our account. Your documents are not used to train it, and you can correct anything it reads.

Where it is kept

Your information is stored with Amazon Web Services, in New Zealand where the service is available. Some of the companies above process information overseas — Stripe and Postmark in the United States, for example — and some processing, such as reading documents, may take place in Australia. Where that happens we rely on those providers' contractual and legal protections being comparable to New Zealand's.

We keep your information while your account is open. If you close it, we delete or anonymise what is yours within 90 days, except records we must keep by law, such as payment records.

Cookies

We use a small number of cookies to keep you signed in. They are marked so page scripts cannot read them, and they are not used for tracking or advertising. We do not use third-party analytics or advertising cookies.

Your rights

You can ask us, at any time and at no cost:

  • for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
  • to correct it;
  • to delete your account and what is in it.

Write to [email protected]. We will answer within 20 working days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Changes and contact

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you by email or in the app before the change takes effect. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed.

Privacy officer: [email protected]