Privacy Policy

iQ Group (“iQ”) Privacy and Personal Information Policy

This Privacy Policy version was last updated on 31 August 2024.

In this document, references to “iQ” or “the Group” are to Aspire Academic Holdings (Pty) Ltd (reg: 2015/370342/07) and its subsidiary and affiliates companies, including divisions, and business units. The Group consists of

iQ Academy (Pty) Ltd. (reg: 2006/033114/07)
Imfundo Finance RF (Pty) Limited (reg: 2016/419633/06)
Aspire Group (Pty) Ltd (reg: 2007/003887/07)

iQ adheres to the highest standards of protecting your personal information when we process it by virtue of your use of our Products, Services, your use of our website https://www.iqacademy.ac.za/ or any of its related blogs, websites, applications or platforms (collectively, “the Website”), or by providing us with your personal information in any other way.

As such, we have created this specific and detailed Privacy Policy (“Policy”) for you to read and appreciate exactly how we collect, process and safeguard your personal information and respect your privacy.

Please note that the iQ Group companies are private limited liability companies duly registered and operating in accordance with the laws of South Africa.
iQ Academy (Pty) Ltd is a registered Private Higher Education Institution under the Higher Education Act, 1997, with Registration Certificate No. 2012/HE07/001.
For more information regarding your personal information lawfully stored or used by iQ, please contact regulatory@iqa.ac.za.
Not all terms are necessarily defined in order or may be defined in our other agreements or policies.

Please ensure that you read all the provisions below, and our other iQ rules and policies which may apply from time to time, and which are made available to you, to understand all of your, and our, rights and duties.

1. Important information and who we are

Purpose of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy aims to give you information on how iQ collects and processes your personal data through any form of your engagement with iQ such as your engagement with us when contacting, contracting or corresponding with us, when using our Services, accessing or using the Website, or providing us with your personal information in any other way (such as when participating in courses or surveys, participating in events, promotions, signing up for newsletters or sharing a testimonial).

This Privacy Policy complies with, and facilitates the obligations required from, the South African Protection of Personal Information Act, No. 4 of 2013 (“POPI”), as amended.

It is important that you read this Privacy Policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This Privacy Policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
By virtue of the comprehensive and unique educational services we provide to our clients, we must process limited special categories/sensitive of personal data as well as the data of minors (if a user student is a minor). Users understand and expressly consent to this processing. All such special categories/sensitive data is protected/secured at better standards than conventional data.
Minors must only use the Website and Services using their parent’s devices and have their parent’s supervision and consent when doing so, where all minors’ parents/guardians will be liable for not only their child’s/ward’s use of the Services and Website but are also hereby providing their express consent to our processing of their child’s/ward’s personal data when using our Services and Website.

If customers use group solutions and service channels (including both assisted and unassisted interactions), or by accepting any agreement, contract, or document with the Group or by utilising any product or service offered by the group, customers agree that in order to:

conclude and fulfil contractual terms or obligations to a customer; ·
comply with obligations imposed by law; or
to protect or pursue customers’, the Group’s, or a third party’s legitimate interests, including offering solutions that best meet customers’ needs;

customers’ personal information may be processed through centralised functions and systems across Group.

Responsible Party and Operator roles

iQ is the “Responsible Party” and is responsible for your personal data in instances where we decide the processing operations concerning your personal data. Sometimes we also operate as a “Operator” of personal data on behalf of a third-party Responsible Party, where that Responsible Party’s privacy terms will apply, but we will draw your attention to them, when applicable.
We have appointed an Information Officer (“IO”) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the IO using the details set out below.

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: iQ Academy (Pty) Ltd.
Name of IO: David Nel
Email address: regulatory@iqa.ac.za
Postal address: P O BOX 12053, Die Boord, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, 7613
Telephone number: 087 086 6065

Changes to the Privacy Policy and your Duty to Inform us of Changes

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please update your personal data by either amending on your Virtual Campus profile, sending us an email on info@iqa.ac.za or contacting our student experience centre at +27 87 086 6065, if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-Party Links on Website or otherwise

The Website may include links to third-party websites, third-party service providers, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements or terms. When you leave our Website, or engage with such third parties, we encourage you to read the distinct privacy policy applicable to that entity.

2. The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal identifiable information, means any information about an individual, both natural and juristic entities (i.e. people and companies), from which that individual/entity can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).We may collect, use, store and transfer (“process”) different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

Identity Data including first name, maiden name, age, last name, country of residence, username or similar identifier, title, disability, date of birth and gender, what you are interested in studying and/or why you would like to study or the information about your company such as company registration details, company address and name;
Contact Data including email address, physical/registered/business addresses, social media contact details and telephone numbers;
Employment Data including name of employer (current and past), addresses, contract person, industry of your employer as well as positions you may hold with the current and past employers.
Financial Data including bank account details, third-party payment provider information, credit records at registered credit bureaus, we do not store any credit card information processed through our payment portals (for details of their privacy policy please visit the related site);
Social Media Data including all information accessible on your publicly available profile such as images, photos, photo tags, likes, followers, comments, posts and stories;
Educational Data including your current programme and your attended learning institutions, course selections, course results, course completion, course assignments, disciplinary records, awards and course reviews;
Transaction Data including details about payments to and from you, contracts, contractual terms, contract fees, signups, subscriptions, invoices, statements and other details of products and services you have obtained from us, or provide to us;
Technical Data including internet protocol address/es, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, cookies, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access the Website;
Profile Data including your Website/Profile username and password, preferences, feedback, opinion, ratings and reviews, and survey responses;
Usage Data including information about how you use our company, Website, surveys, events, products, data and Services; and
Marketing and Communications Data including your preferences in receiving notices and marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific Website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with services or allow you to provide us with your services). In this case, we may have to cancel Website-access or Services you have with us, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:

Direct interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact, Technical, Social Media, Usage, Transaction, Profile, Educational, Marketing & Communications and Financial Data by filling in various iQ forms, Website forms or by corresponding with us by phone, email, post or otherwise.

Automated technologies or interactions: As you interact with our Website, we may automatically collect Technical Data and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We may collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.

Third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources and will treat that information with due care.

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to and for legitimate reasons, which you hereby expressly understand and consent to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

where we have your express consent to do so;
where we need to consult with you or perform on the Services contract we are concluding with you;
where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests; and/or
where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
We do, from time to time, process personal data about Individuals in an automated way to evaluate certain personal aspects about such Individual, including to enable us to analyse and make predictions about their interests and how they are likely to interact with our business and which of our services may be of interest to them. This is commonly referred to as profiling and it is our way of providing Individuals with a more bespoke customer experience based on how we think the Individual will engage with us. We may choose to send a particular marketing communication to an Individual based on our calculation of which of our services may be of most interest to them. The Group may use a customer’s personal information to make an automated decision as allowed by the law. An example of automated decision making is the approval or declining an application. Customers have the right to query any such decisions made, and the group will provide reasons for the decisions as far as reasonably possible.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data:

To engage with you after you have contacted us requesting an engagement via the Website or otherwise
To provide you with our Services as contracted (as a student client)
To contract with you as an Operator and/or other third-party service provider to iQ
To allow you to use the Website or participate in any iQ event
To provide it to our authorised third-party service providers who need your personal data to provide their private services to you or us (such as to contracted educators, advisers or payment gateway providers)
To process and service your payment for any services rendered by iQ or its service providers and to manage payments, fees and charges
To satisfy regulatory and legal requirements from any of our regulators or other agencies
To manage our relationship with you which may include notifying you about changes to our terms or Privacy Policy or Services
To administer and protect our organisation and our Website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)
To use data analytics to improve our Website, Services, engage relationships and experiences
To provide you with direct and user-specific marketing, make suggestions and recommendations to you about events or services that may be of interest to you
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal basis we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. To manifest your rights attached to any marketing sent to you as an existing customer, please use the in-built prompts provided on those communications, or contact us.
You will receive marketing communications from us if you are a contracted data subject of ours already (or become one by accepting this Policy) have requested information from us, use our Services, have participated in any iQ service or event, or if you provided us with your details when registering for a promotion or event and, in each case, you have not opted-out of receiving that marketing.

Third-Party Marketing

Whilst we may use your personal data within our iQ organisation group, we will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data publicly with any entity outside the iQ group of organisations for public purposes.

Opting Out

You can ask us or authorised third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us or the relevant third party at any time and requesting us to cease or change your marketing preferences.
Where you opt-out of receiving these marketing messages, this opt-out will not apply to other personal data of yours which we process for another lawful basis.

Change of Purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above.
Internal Third Parties as set out in the Glossary;
External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary;
Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our organisation or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other organisations or merge with them. If a change happens to our organisation, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this Privacy Policy.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions and standards.

Express Cookies provision

The Website may make use of “cookies” to automatically collect information and data through the standard operation of the Internet servers. “Cookies” are small text files a website can use (and which we may use) to recognise repeat users, facilitate the user’s on-going access to and use of a website and allow a website to track usage behaviour and compile aggregate data that will allow the Website operator to improve the functionality of the Website and its content, and to display more focused advertising to a user by way of third party tools.
The type of information collected by cookies is not used to personally identify you. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature. Please note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with certain features available on our Website, and thus if you disable the cookies on your browser, you may not be able to use those features, and your access to our Website will therefore be limited. If you do not disable “cookies”, you are deemed to consent to our use of any personal information collected using those cookies, subject to the provisions of this Policy and our other policies or terms.

6. International Transfers

We share your personal data within the iQ group of organisations and affiliates, and this may involve transferring and processing your data outside of South Africa.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of either territory, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We will always have a contract concluded between the parties speaking specifically to data protection and the duties of each party related thereto; and

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the Information Regulator’s Office of South Africa; and/or
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts/clauses approved by the Information Regulator’s Office which give personal data the same protection it has in South Africa.

Please contact us if you require further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data outside of South Africa

7. Data security

iQ is committed to securing the personal information we hold by taking reasonable measures to prevent its destruction, unauthorized access, and loss. If there is any compromise to data integrity or confidentiality, we will notify you in writing.

8. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, or for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements (including financial/tax reporting and record-keeping laws), whichever is the longest.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data, any other South African applicable law through requiring us to retain the data and whether we can achieve those purposes other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available and can be requested from the Information Officer.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data; see (9) below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. Your legal rights

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the South African regulator’s office (Information Regulator’s Office of South Africa). We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to deal with your concerns before you approach any such regulator, so please contact us in the first instance.

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data where we are the relevant “Responsible Party” over such personal data. Please contact us to find out more about these rights which include the rights to:
request access to your personal data;
request correction of your personal data;
request erasure of your personal data;
object to the processing of your personal data;
request a restriction of processing your personal data;
request transfer of your personal data; and/or
right to withdraw consent.

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no valid reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be communicated to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
where our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it;
where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
you have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform on a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain Website access or Services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. Please take note that regardless of your right to withdraw consent under POPI, other South African legislation applies and may require that we continue to process your data in order to comply with anti-corruption, educational reporting, child-protection, crime-fighting and/or other national legislation, which you expressly understand and agree to.
On receipt of any of the requests above, iQ will as soon as practicable provide access, correct or complete, erase or deny your request as far as lawfully permitted in relation to your personal information, and provide feedback to you.

10. Glossary

Lawful Basis

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our organisation in conducting and managing our organisation to enable us to give you the best service and the most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

Express consent means the confirmed express consent you have provided to our processing of your personal data by actively accepting this Privacy Policy.

Third Parties

Internal Third Parties means other entities or parties in the iQ group acting as joint controllers or processors and who are based in South Africa and provide IT and system administration services and undertake reporting.

External Third Parties means:

Authorised third-party service providers under contract with iQ who need your personal information to contact and transact with you pursuant to your use of the Services;
Third parties such as Opco 365 (Pty) Ltd, major South African banks, the Department of Higher Education and Training, relevant SETA’s;
service providers acting as processors based in South Africa who provide IT and system administration services;
South African or other national governments and/or their respective authorities pursuant to our adherence with anti-corruption and crime-fighting legislation; and/or
professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in South Africa who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services as required.