Customer Privacy Notice
Why should you read this document?
During the course of dealing with us, we will ask you to provide us with detailed personal information relating to your existing circumstances, your financial situation and, in some cases, your health and family health history (Your Personal Data). This document is important as it allows us to explain to you what we will need to do with Your Personal Data, and the various rights you have in relation to Your Personal Data.
What do we mean by “Your Personal Data”?
Your Personal Data means any information that describes or relates to your personal circumstances. Your Personal Data may identify you directly, for example your name, address, date of birth, national insurance number. Your Personal Data may also identify you indirectly, for example, your employment situation, your physical and mental health history, or any other information that could be associated with your cultural or social identity.
In the context of providing you with assistance in relation to your marine mortgage and finance requirements, Your Personal Data may include:
- Title, name, date of birth, gender, nationality, civil/marital status, contact details, addresses and documents that are necessary to verify your identity
- Employment and remuneration information, (including salary/bonus schemes/overtime/sick pay/other benefits), employment history
- Bank account details, tax information, loans and credit commitments, personal credit history, sources of income and expenditure, family circumstances and details of dependents
- Health status and history, details of treatment and prognosis, medical reports (further details are provided below specifically with regard to the processing we may undertake in relation to this type of information)
- Any pre-existing marine mortgage and finance products and the terms and conditions relating to these
How we will deal with Your Personal Data
When we speak with you about your marine mortgage and finance requirements, we do so on the basis that both parties are entering a contract for the supply of services.
In order to perform that contract, and to arrange the products you require, we have the right to use Your Personal Data for the purposes detailed below.
Alternatively, either in the course of initial discussions with you or when the contract between us has come to an end for whatever reason, we have the right to use Your Personal Data provided it is in our legitimate business interest to do so and your rights are not affected. For example, we may need to respond to requests from mortgage lenders, insurance providers and our Compliance Service Provider relating to the advice we have given to you, or to make contact with you to seek feedback on the service you received.
On occasion, we will use Your Personal Data for contractual responsibilities we may owe our regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, or for wider compliance with any legal or regulatory obligation to which we might be subject. In such circumstances, we would be processing Your Personal Data in order to meet a legal, compliance or other regulatory obligation to which we are subject.
How do we collect Your Personal Data?
We will collect and record Your Personal Data from a variety of sources, but mainly directly from you. You will usually provide information during the course of our initial meetings or conversations with you to establish your circumstances and needs and preferences in relation to Marine Mortgage and Finance. You will provide information to us verbally and in writing, including email.
We may also obtain some information from third parties, for example, credit checks, information from your employer and searches of information in the public domain such as the electoral roll. If we use technology solutions to assist in the collection of Your Personal Data, for example software that is able to verify your credit status, we will only do so if we have consent from you, for us, or our nominated processor to access your information in this manner. With regards to electronic ID checks we would not require your consent but will inform you of how such software operates and the purpose for which it is used.
What happens to Your Personal Data when it is disclosed to us?
In the course of handling Your Personal Data, we will:
- Record and store Your Personal Data in our paper files, mobile devices and on our computer systems (websites, email, hard drives, and cloud facilities). This information can only be accessed by employees and consultants within our firm and only when it is necessary to provide our service to you and to perform any administration tasks associated with or incidental to that service.
- On occasions submit Your Personal Data to marine mortgage and finance providers, both in paper form and on-line via a secure portal. The provision of this information to a third party is essential in allowing us to progress any enquiry or application made on your behalf and to deal with any additional questions or administrative issues that lenders and providers may raise.
- Use Your Personal Data for the purposes of responding to any queries you may have in relation to any marine mortgage and finance you may take out, or to inform you of any developments in relation to those products and/or policies of which we might become aware.
Credit Reference Agency’s (CRA)
In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs). We may also carry out further periodic searches at CRA’s to allow us to manage your account with us.
To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRAs. This will include your name, date of birth and residential address. It may also include additional information such as your salary, previous residential addresses and other information you provide as part of your credit application.
The CRAs will match this information to the records they hold about you, and provide in return, both public information (including the electoral register) and shared credit information in relation to your financial situation and financial history.
We will use this information to:
- Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product;
- Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us;
- Prevent criminal activity, e.g fraud and money laundering;
- Manage your account(s);
- Trace and recover any debts; and
- Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.
We will continue to exchange information about you with CRA’s while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRA’s about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full or on time, CRA’s will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRA’s.
When CRA’s receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.
If you are making a joint application, or tell us that you have a spouse of a financial associate, we will link your records together, so you should make sure you discuss this with them, and share with them this information, before lodging the application. CRA’s will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as your partner successfully files for a disassociation with the CRA’s to break the link.
The identities of the CRA’s, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRA’s are explained in more detail at www.equifax.co.uk/crain
Sharing Your Personal Data
From time to time Your Personal Data will be shared with:
- Finance lenders
- Third parties which we believe will be able to assist us with your enquiry or application, or which are able to support your needs as identified. These third parties will include but may not be limited to, our compliance advisers.
- Where finance quotes have originated from partner sites e.g. boat brokers and dealers, the partner will receive a copy of the quote generated from our site.
In each case, Your Personal Data will only be shared for the purposes set out in this Customer Privacy Notice, i.e. to progress your marine mortgage and finance enquiry and to provide you with our professional services.
Please note that this sharing of Your Personal Data does not entitle such third parties to send you marketing or promotional messages, it is shared to ensure we can adequately fulfil our responsibilities to you, and as otherwise set out in this Customer Privacy Notice.
We do not envisage that the performance by us of our service will involve Your Personal Data being transferred outside of the European Economic Area.
Security and retention of Your Personal Data
Your privacy is important to us and we will keep Your Personal Data secure in accordance with our legal responsibilities. We will take reasonable steps to safeguard Your Personal Data against it being accessed unlawfully or maliciously by a third party.
We also expect you to take reasonable steps to safeguard your own privacy when transferring information to us, such as not sending confidential information over unprotected email, ensuring email attachments are password protected or encrypted and only using secure methods of postage when original documentation is being sent to us.
Your Personal Data will be retained by us either electronically or in paper form for a minimum period of six years following the advice/service you receive from us, although your data could be held for a longer period where this may be needed to meet the requirements of our regulatory bodies.
Your rights in relation to Your Personal Data
You can:
- request copies of Your Personal Data that is under our control
- ask us to further explain how we use Your Personal Data
- ask us to correct, delete or require us to restrict or stop using Your Personal Data (details as to the extent to which we can do this will be provided at the time of any such request)
- ask us to send an electronic copy of Your Personal Data to another organisation should you wish
- change the basis of any consent you may have provided to enable us to market to you in the future (including withdrawing any consent in its entirety)
How to make contact with us in relation to the use of Your Personal Data
If you have any questions or comments about this document, or wish to make contact in order to exercise any of your rights set out within it, please contact: Stuart Austin, Director.
If we feel we have a legal right not to deal with your request, or to action it in a different way to how you have requested, we will inform you of this at the time.
You should also make contact with us as soon as possible on you becoming aware of any unauthorised disclosure of Your Personal Data, so that we may investigate and fulfil our own regulatory obligations.
If you have any concerns or complaints as to how we have handled Your Personal Data, you may lodge a complaint with the UK’s data protection regulator, the ICO, which can be contacted through its website here, or by writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
Cookie Policy
Cookies are used on our site to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on our website.
Some cookies are essential so you can move around the website and use its features. Without these cookies, some services you’ve asked for can’t be provided. These cookies don’t gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.
What are cookies and how do they work?
Cookies are small bits of text that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Your browser sends these cookies back to the website every time you visit the site again, so it can recognise you and can then tailor what you see on the screen.
Some of the cookies we use
Certain cookies are necessary in order for you to use our website. These are used ‘in-session’ each time you visit and then expire when you leave the site. They’re not stored on your computer and they don’t contain any personal data. However, you can delete them via your browser if you wish to, but this will restrict the functions that you’re able to carry out on our sites.
Session cookies
These enable you to carry out some essential functions on our sites, such as maintaining log in details for the session or a transaction. They also help by minimising the need to transfer information across the internet. They are not stored on your computer and they expire when you terminate your browser session or logout of certain areas.
Secure cookie
A secure cookie is only used when a browser is visiting a server via https, ensuring that the cookie is always encrypted when transmitting from client to server. This makes the cookie less likely to be exposed to cookie theft via eavesdropping.
Persistent cookies
These are used to reinforce a user’s preference e.g. setting items such as the open status of the carousel, and remain until the expiry date and time set by the web server (or otherwise manually deleted by the user).
Analytics
We like to keep track of what pages and links are popular and which ones don’t get used as much to help us keep our site relevant and up to date. It’s also very useful to be able to identify trends of how people navigate our site and help us provide a more friendly solution.
Third-party cookie
Google Analytics tracking (and most web tracking software) uses cookies in order to provide meaningful reports about site visitors. However, Google Analytics cookies do not collect personal data about website visitors.
Managing your cookies
You’ll find more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org, which gives details on how to delete cookies from your computer. For information on how to do this on your mobile phone browser, please see your handset manual.