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Privacy Policy

Why should you read this document?

Simply Ethical Financial Services Ltd, as the Data Controller, is committed to ensuring that your personal data is protected. This privacy policy explains how we use the personal data we collect about you, what your privacy rights are and how the law protects you. It applies to information we collect in relation to:

  • Users of our website; (read Cookies policy as well)
  • People who use our services;
  • Employees or representatives of organisations who use our services or supply us with goods or services;
  • People who contact us via any medium (e.g. through our website, by post, email, telephone or social media).

It is important that you read this policy so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information. We reserve the right to update this privacy policy from time to time.

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 or 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 Investments, Pensions, Insurance or Finance requirements Your Personal Data may include:

  • Title, names, 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, NI number, 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 Investments, Pensions, Insurance or Finance products and the terms and conditions relating to these

The basis upon which our Firm will deal with Your Personal Data

When we deal with you about your Investments, Pensions, Insurance or 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 Compliance advisers 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.

The basis upon which we will process certain parts of Your Personal Data

Where you ask us to assist you with for example your insurance needs, in particular life insurance and insurance that may assist you in the event of an accident or illness, we will ask you information about your ethnic origin, your health and medical history (Your Special Data). We will record and use Your Special Data in order to make enquiries of insurance providers in relation to insurance products that may meet your needs and to provide you with advice/guidance regarding the suitability of any product that may be available to you.

If you have parental responsibility for children under the age of 13, it is also very likely that we will record information on our systems that relates to those children and potentially, to their Special Data. The arrangement of certain types of insurance may involve disclosure by you to us of information relating to historic or current criminal convictions or offences (together “Criminal Disclosures”). This is relevant to insurance related activities such as underwriting, claims and fraud management.

We will use special Data and any Criminal Disclosures in the same way as Your Personal Data generally, as set out in this Privacy policy.

Information on Special Category Data and Criminal Disclosures must be capable of being exchanged freely between insurance intermediaries such as our Firm, and insurance providers, to enable customers to secure the important insurance protection that their needs require.

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. For ‘Personal Financial Advice’ service, 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 Investments, Pensions, Insurance or Finance. You will provide information to us verbally and in writing, including email. In the case of our online advice service i.e. ‘Simplified Advice Online’ and our execution only service i.e. ‘Self Select Trading’, your personal data will be gathered through online application and where applicable through a paper-based forms.

We may also collect personal information about you from commercially or publicly available sources, for example, to verify your identity, check the accuracy of information we hold about you or to obtain contact information if we have lost contact with you.

We may collect and use information that is collected automatically when you visit our website, including your Internet Protocol address (commonly known as the IP address), geographic location, the web browser you are using, and your operating system. We may also collect information on the full click path you use while on our site. For further details please view our Cookies Policy for more information.

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.
  • Submit Your Personal Data to Product 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 providers may raise.
  • Use Your Personal Data for the purposes of responding to any queries you may have in relation to any Investments, Pensions, Insurance or Finance you may take out, or to inform you of any developments in relation to those products and/or polices of which we might become aware

Sharing Your Personal Data

From time to time Your Personal Data will be shared with:

  • Companies we have chosen to support us in delivery of the products and services we offer to you.
  • Investment Providers/Pension Providers/Mortgage lenders/Finance lenders and insurance providers
  • Third parties who we believe will be able to assist us with your enquiry or application, or who are able to support your needs as identified. These third parties will include but may not be limited to, our Compliance Advisers, Product specialists, providers of legal services such as estate planners (in each case where we believe this to be required due to your particular circumstances).
  • 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 Investments, Pensions, Insurance or 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.
  • Companies you ask to share your data with.
  • Credit reference agencies
  • Fraud prevention agencies
  • Agencies whose service we use to verify your identity
  • HM Revenue & Customs
  • UK regulatory bodies, such as the Financial Conduct Authority and the Information Commissioner’s Office
  • Research, consultancy or technology companies who we have chosen to support us in delivering our products and service to you.
  • Organisation that introduce you to us
  • The UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme
  • The Financial Ombudsman Service
  • Law enforcement and other appointed agencies who support us in the detection and prevention of crime.

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.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 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 and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Even when you no longer have relationship with us, we are required to keep information for different legal and regulatory reasons. The length of time will vary but we review our data retention arrangements regularly to ensure that data is only retained for an appropriate period.

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.

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 our Firm 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:

Wasim Khan

020 8945 3786

wk@simplyethical.com

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, who can be contacted through their website at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ or by writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.