Data protection law defines some personal information as “special categories of data”. This includes information about physical or mental health, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, trade union membership or biometric data. It may be necessary to collect some data that falls into this category to ensure that we have a complete understanding of the reason for your financial circumstances or where it may help us to provide a better service to you.
Where it is necessary to request this data, by disclosing this information to us, you are giving your explicit consent for us and any other third party to process this data as set out above.
If you provide personal information about someone else, for example when a joint enquiry is made, you must do so with the permission of the other person. We will use the personal information about the other person in the ways as described in this privacy policy.
We collect your information in a number of ways.
We will only collect and use your personal information in accordance with data protection laws. Our grounds for processing your personal information are as follows:
You have a right to object to our use of your personal information for these legitimate interests including where we may use your personal information to create a profile to inform customer demographics. If you raise an objection, we will stop processing your personal information unless very exceptional circumstances apply, in which case we will let you know why we are continuing to process your personal information.
Following your enquiry your information will be stored on our system and it may be also shared with our third-party associates upon your consent.
We recommend reviewing their privacy policies which will detail how they will use your information. We may be paid an introductory fee if you opt for a solution from our third-party associates.
Other third parties: We may also share your personal information where we have your consent to do so, or where we are required to do so under a legal or regulatory obligation, for example where we are required to do so by a court order, the police, local authorities or the courts. We might share some of your information with the emergency services if you are in any immediate danger.
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.
We will not share your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
You have the right to request from us a copy of the personal information that we may hold about you. This is often called a “Data Subject Access Request”.
If the personal information we hold about you is incorrect you have the right to request that we correct this.
You may request that your personal information is deleted or that we stop processing the information if we’re no longer entitled to process it.
There may be occasions where we are unable to delete the data due to our legal or regulatory obligations. We will however discuss this with you if you request for your information to be deleted.
We will keep a record of your personal information to ensure that we provide you with the best service possible and where we’re required to keep your personal information to meet our legal and regulatory obligations.
Your information will be deleted after 2 years unless you request the information to be deleted sooner.
If you are not happy with how we process your personal information you should contact us in the first instance.
If you’re not happy with how we have dealt with your complaint you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement.
You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
Cookies are small amounts of information which we store on your computer. Unless you have indicated your objection when disclosing your details to us, our system will issue cookies to your computer when you log on to the site. Cookies make it easier for you to log on to and use the site during future visits. They also allow us to monitor website traffic and to personalise the content of the site for you. You may set up the browser on your computer to reject cookies although, in that case, you may not be able to use certain features on our Website. If you do not wish to receive cookies in the future, please let us know.