Privacy Policy

We are aware how important your privacy is, based on this we have implemented measures which will ensure any personal data that is obtained from you by visiting our website will be processed and maintained in line with accepted principles of good information handling. In addition to this also in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Contained within this statement and set out below are details of the type of information that we at we may hold about you our customer, also how we obtain and process any information we may have and importantly how we protect your privacy.

This privacy policy is only applicable to us and personal information which may be collected and obtained by us.

Changes to this privacy policy, we may choose to amend the content of this privacy policy on occasion. If this occurs then a notification will be posted on this website, please be aware that this privacy policy was last updated on the 24/02/2012.

How we may contact you

Unless you state otherwise to us,lenders, third parties and other brokers (see further section on’How we keep you informed’ ) may contact you via telephone, email, post, sms, automated messages or fax.

How you contact us

If you are required to telephone us using the specified telephone numbers on our website or advertising/marketing/correspondence material then your call may be recorded for training, quality and regulatory purposes. We pride ourselves in complete customer care and this gives us the opportunity to continuously improve and monitor our customer experience.

How we keep you informed

We may want to make contact with you at some point in order to keep you informed regarding offers on products or services which we think you may find of interest, this contact will be made via telephone, email, sms, automated messages or fax. Third parties may also wish to contact you from the information we have shared with them, any information that is shared to third parties is completely trusted for the purpose it is specified for, third parties may also use the same means of contact stated above.

Third parties could contact you as we may be unable to find you the loan you are looking for, this way third parties may have a product or service to offer you which potentially could suit your needs. If this is the case the third parties will pass your details onto a lender, they may require to carry out a further credit check. Whilst the lender or third party will make contact with you to confirm whether your application has been successful they will too have their own privacy policy and recommend you refer to them, upon making your application, you will be requested to agree to their use of your information.

Obtaining Data/Information

I. You are free to access and browse our website at your convenience and do not have to provide any personal information/data, however I would like to refer you to ‘Cookies’ paragraph set out within this privacy policy).

II. The information/data that we would normally collect from you is as follows:

  • Name
  • Residential address
  • Residential status
  • Date of birth
  • National insurance number
  • Email address (if applicable)
  • Telephone number (home, mobile, work)
  • Income details
  • Details of bank account
  • What you do on our website; the results of this will be used to show us examples of which parts of our website are most and least used (please refer to ‘Cookies’ paragraph).

However if you register with us, have a question about our services or alternatively choose to send an email to us. We may also collect the above personal information/data in this instance in order for us to respond to your enquiry.

We may also receive personal information/data from 3rd parties, which enables us to offer Identified potential customers products and services who have expressed interest in our products and services. Any information/data obtained from 3rd parties is checked in regards to accuracy and we will endeavour to check your information with you on occasion.

Ensuring your personal details & or preferences are kept up to date

It is your responsibility to ensure that any information we have on record for you is kept up to date and correct. If you do require any of your information to be updated then please contact us as soon as possible so we can ensure it is corrected.

If you require your preferences to be updated then please contact our Compliance Manager as soon as possible (details set out below within ‘Contact’ paragraph).

How we use your Personal Information

I. Information that is collected by us us may be used by us in the following ways and will be recorded electronically:

  1. To share your information with selected companies who can assist you if you are in severe difficulty with debt such as insolvency practitioners and bankruptcy specialists. In particular The Consultancy People Limited, CreditFix, Debt Consultancy Services Limited and Debt Free Associates Limited (www.debtfreeassociates.co.uk)
  2. Verify customers identity and credit standing and to enable us to consider and process your application for a loan or other products or services.
  3. Assess your credit history and confirm your employment details. Collect unpaid loans and debt that may be owed by you to us.
  4. Extract certain information for the purpose of generating statistics for our own internal purposes (including credit and/or behaviour scoring, and market and product analysis).
  5. Detect, prevent and investigate actual and potential fraud and related activities.
  6. Develop, manage and market products and services to meet our customer’s needs and to contact customers for products and services that may be of interest, to determine your eligibility for different products and services that our customers may be interested in.
  7. Contact you in connection with your enquiry.
  8. Update this website to better meet our client’s needs in the future.
  9. Help us to carry out admin and service your account.

II. As some of our affiliates who form part of our group are based outside of the UK then we may use your information outside the UK. If we do use your information outside the UK then we have established levels of protection to ensure that your information is safeguarded.

Fraud prevention agencies & Credit referencing

I. Upon application to us we may use both fraud prevention agencies and credit referencing agencies to help us make relevant decisions. This section has been reduced down into a simple explanation of how we will use your personal information/data regarding credit referencing agencies and fraud prevention agencies.

Further information on fraud prevention agencies can be obtained from our Compliance Manager.

If you do choose to contact the CRA, please bear in mind that the information held may not be the same throughout the UK so it may be useful to contact all CRAs. A small fee will be charged when information is requested, this fee currently stands at £2.00

To help you with this, we have provided below contact details for the CRAs:

Equifax Plc, Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 3001, Bradford, BD1 5US, Tel number 0870 010 0583, www.equifax.co.uk

Experian, Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF, 0844 4818000, www.experian.co.uk

CallCredit, Consumer Services Team, PO Box 491, Leeds, LS3 1WZ, 0870 060141

We will make the following checks about yourself and others:

  1. Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) – when this type of check is made a footprint will appear on your credit file, this can be seen by other lenders. CRAs will provide us with shared credit information, fraud prevention information and public information, this information will include the electoral register.
  2. Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs) –when we assess your application we will also make a checkcustomers identities in order to prevent fraud and crime against customers, this also includes money laundering. We may also make additional searches over periods of time with CRAs and FPAs, this ensures that our records are kept up to date with any vital information this information will then be used to ascertain whether to continue with your credit or any future credit that may be available. As we have an obligation to comply with responsible lending FPAs and CRAs assist us in doing so.
  3. Joint Applications – If you the customer make’s a joint application or you advise that you have a spouse or financial associate, your customer records will be associated and link together this will ensure that theagreement has been made from both applicants to discuss and disclose information .A link will also be made with CRAs , the link will remain until one or both parts informs and applies with the CRA for a disassociation to end the link.
  4. Information sent to CRAs – Information received by CRAs will be recorded by them. If after an application with us, you take out a loan activity and details of management of your account will be passed onto them. In the event that you take out a loan with us and fail to repay back the full funds required this will also be recorded with the CRA. In this case information may be passed onto other companies by CRAs and FPAs in order to locate and trace you in order to recover any outstanding debts. We must warn you that if this does occur then this will remain on your record for 6 years once a case has been closed by either settlement or default.
  5. Inaccurate information provided by you – False or inaccurate information if given by yourself will be brought to the attention of FPAs or other relevant companies who deal in fraud/crime prevention, the same applies to if we suspect fraud or false or inaccurate information has been supplied . Any reported instances may also be accessed by law enforcement agencies i.e. HMRC, regulatory bodies or the police for use to prevent any possible fraud and money laundering for the following:
    Checking details on applications for credit and credit related or other facilities;
    • Managing credit and credit related accounts or facilities
    • Recovering debt
    • Checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance
    • Checking details of job applicants and employees
  6. Information recorded outside the UK – we may use and get access to information outside of the UK that has been recorded and reported by fraud prevention agencies.
  7. Information/data usages for other purposes – if you have given permission for your information to be used for other purposes, in limited circumstances your information may be used for other purposes when required by law or under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Do we share your information with third parties

Yes we may share your information with affiliates and partners, who may process the personal information/data you have provided to us, however this will only be for the purpose that this privacy policy specifies.

In addition to the above we may also on occasion share your information/data with other parties who are not within our group, if we do we will seek your approval first. If your information is shared with a third parties, we will instruct and state restrictions which will protect your information.

If we do share your information with parties outside of our group this may be for the following reasons:

  1. To assist in finding you a loan, as we are a finance broker. As our services are often provided in conjunction with other partners. To assist you in finding a product/service we would need to provide these partners with your information in order for us to help you.
  2. Our staff and agents will require your information in order to carry out a service for you on behalf of us.
  3. If you wish to be provided with details of special offers and promotions, we outline this in the section called ‘How we keep you informed’.
  4. In order to protect our business along with our group of affiliated companies and possible others. Your information may be shared with third parties when we believe it is necessary to comply with the law or protect our rights or another person’s rights, property, or in fact safety. We may need to exchange information with third parties i.e. law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies other lenders, if this is the case it will protect us against fraud and also reduce any risks exposed to.
  5. If the occasion arises whereby our company changes ownership or assets, then the new proprietors will need access to your information in order to continue with operations and to run the company effectively. This would cover shareholders and other companies where the agreement of transfer has been established.

Confidentiality & security

We recognis the importance of keeping personal information/data from a confidentiality and security aspect; due to this we have introduced specialised rules, measures, introduced specialist technology and implemented security policies to ensure that your information is protected. Whilst we make every attempt to protect your information there are still risks involved when inputting your information online and we need to make you aware of this. We would only request further sensitive information online in certain circumstances so please refrain from inputting sensitive information unless we state otherwise to do so.

Can you access the information we hold about you

Yes under certain circumstances you will be able to access the records we hold about you, if you request this information then we ask that you submit your request in writing to us. If you require information from separate affiliates within our group then you will be required to request each in writing.

How long do we keep your information for

The amount of time we hold your information depends on the basis it was provided by you to us, please see the following examples:

  1. If you request that we do not contact you for advertising and marketing reasons, then we still may need to keep your information as this would reflect your preferences.
  2. Information is also kept relating to any transactions you may enter via our website, this information will be kept for a minimum of 6 years which will commence at the end of the relationship. We are required to do so to ensure that if any disputes or complaints are raised then we have your information to enable us to address the complaints or disputes. Your information will be kept however purely for business needs.
  3. In order to provide you with a service we will be required to keep your information whilst we continue to provide you with a service for however long this may take us.
  4. Another reason for us to keep information about you is for legitimate business needs where relevant so we can comply with what the law states.

Usage of links to other sites

We may provide links to other websites via our website, if we do so then we cannot be held responsible for the other sites privacy policy as they will hold their own specific to them, this also applies to site content, practices they carry out and the services and products they may offer, all of which we cannot take any liability for.

Processing of sensitive information

Should we be required to process your sensitive information, then we will notify you and seek your agreement prior to us doing so. Sensitive information about our customers under the Data Protection Act 1998 includes the following:

  1. Health conditions
  2. Racial or ethnic origin
  3. Political opinion or trade union membership
  4. Sexual orientation
  5. Philosophical beliefs
  6. Religious beliefs
  7. Suspected or proven criminal activity (which includes proceedings)

Cookies and Web Beacons

If enabled, we may place cookies on your machine that store small amounts of data on your computer about your visit to any of the pages of this Website. Cookies assist us in tracking which of our features appeal the most to you and what content you may have viewed on past visits. When you visit this site again, cookies can enable us to customize our content according to your preferences. These cookies do not track user information in a way that identifies your name, and all our cookie data is encrypted and cannot be read by other websites. To find out more about accepting or refusing cookies from www.allaboutcookies.org.

By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Third-party tracking utility companies also assist us in tracking Website activity and collecting Website analytics data. We do not share any personal information with these third parties, but our tracking utility company uses session ID, persistent cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site. The use of cookies by our third-party tracking utility companies is not covered by our Privacy Policy. We do not have access or control over these cookies.

We also use Google Analytics to collect non-personally identifiable information, in aggregate form, to understand website/page visit volumes in terms of source, geography, browser, etc.

Google Analytics employs a software technology called web beacons, that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Web beacons are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users or responses to emails. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Web beacons cannot be disabled in same manner as cookies may. We do not tie the information gathered by web beacons to our customers’ personally identifiable information.

We use the following types of cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies.
These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website.

Analytical/performance cookies.
They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

Functionality cookies.
These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).

Please note that third parties (including, for example, providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

Contact about this privacy policy

If you have any queries or questions relating to our privacy policy then please contact us.

ICO Registration ZA505071

 
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