1. Important Information And Who We Are

For the purposes of the relevant data protection legislation, Billing Finance Limited is the data controller and is responsible for your personal information.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out below.

Our full details are:-

Billing Finance Limited, Billing House, The Causeway, Great Billing, Northampton NN3 9EX

Telephone number: 01604 402204

Email address: gdpr@billingfinance.co.uk

We are a company registered in England and Wales and our company registration number is 1693490.

Billing Finance Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with reference number 314223.

Please ensure that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing your personal information so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using that information. This privacy policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.

2. The Information We Collect About You

Personal information, or personal data, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of information about you which we have grouped together below.

Types of Personal Information:-

• Identity – includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact – includes postal address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial and Credit – includes bank account number and sort code, bank statements, digital access to view your bank transactions – if you consent to this (known as “open banking”), payment card details, income information, employment status, benefits status, credit history and debt profile.
• Transactional – includes details about payments to and from you.
• Technical – details on the technology and devices you use to interact with us and use our website, including internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.
• Profile – includes your username, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
• Usage – includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications – includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

The law states that certain potentially sensitive information should be treated differently and offered greater protection. This is called Special Category Data and includes such things as information on an individual’s: –

• Race or ethnic origin;
• Religious or political beliefs;
• Trade Union membership;
• Health;
• Genetic or biometric information;
• Certain lifestyle information, such as sexual orientation;
• Details on criminal conviction or allegations.

We do not generally deal with information of this nature, but in certain circumstances, we may collect information about health conditions. In some cases, having this information can help us to manage and improve our service to you. We will only ever do this with your consent. We may also collect information about criminal convictions and offences as part of our fraud prevention and anti money laundering requirements. We will use this information as part of the criteria for our lending decisions.

If You Choose Not To Provide Personal Information

We may need to collect certain personal information to comply with our legal obligations or to enter into a contract with you. If you choose not to provide that information when requested, we may not be able to proceed with things such as credit reference and fraud prevention checks. This would mean that we cannot enter into the contract with you and we may have to decline your application.

3. How Is Your Personal Information Collected?

We use different methods to collect information from and about you including: –

Information you give to us. You may give us your personal information by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal information you provide or give us access to when you: –

• apply for finance with us;
• request marketing to be sent to you;
• enter a promotion or survey; or
• give us some feedback including complaints or compliments.

Information We Obtain From Third Parties Or Publicly Available Sources. We may receive your personal information from various third parties and public sources such as: –

• Finance brokers and dealers who have referred your application for finance to us;
• Credit reference agencies such as Experian;
• Insurers;
• The Land Registry;
• Companies House;
• Data brokers or aggregators;
• Technical information from analytics providers, advertising networks and search information providers;
• Fraud prevention agencies;
• Social networks;
• Employers;
• Publicly available information such as the Electoral Register;
• Agents, suppliers, sub-contractors and advisers. These can be types of firms we use to help us run accounts and services. They can also be specialist companies who advise us on ways to develop and improve our business;
• Government and law enforcement agencies;
• Open banking platforms;
• Third parties who check the accuracy of data and verify the identity of individuals or verify the authenticity of the information provided.

Information We Collect When You Use Our Website

We may also automatically collect Technical information about your browsing actions and patterns when accessing our website. We collect this personal information by using cookies, and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical information about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy for further details. We may also collect Transaction and Profile information if you use our website to manage your account with us.

4. How We Use Your Personal Information

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information when we have one or more of the following reasons: –

• We need to do so in order to perform the contract we have with you, or in order to enter a contract (which we will refer to as “Contract” below);
• It is in our legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override that interest (which we refer to as “Legitimate Interest” below);
• We need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (which we will refer to as “Legal Obligation” below);
• We have your consent (which we will refer to as “Consent” below).

We have set out below details of the ways in which we may use your personal information, and the legal reasons we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Automated Decision Making

When you make an application for finance with us, in certain instances we use solely automated systems to determine if you meet our lending criteria. This means that a decision is made by our systems automatically, without any human involvement.

We use automated decision making in two ways: –

• Credit scoring – your credit score is determined by information taken from your credit file and gives us information about the payment and history of your other credit accounts and tell us if the product you have applied for is likely to be suitable for you;
• Affordability assessment tool – this tool looks at information at you have given us, information contained in your credit file and other information held by a credit reference agency to determine if you meet our lending criteria.

We use automated systems because they help us to make quick and fair decisions, and we regularly check the systems we use for accuracy.
The law gives you certain rights regarding decisions made in this way, namely: –

• The right to not have decisions made by automated means alone;
• The right to challenge any decision made in this way; and
• The right to an explanation as to how the decision has been reached.

Please contact us if you would like to know more about these rights.

Opting Out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by contacting us.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing communications, this will not apply to personal information provided to us as a result of a product/service purchase, product/service experience or other transactions.

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 we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will only do this if we have your consent to do so, or if there is a clear legal provision requiring or allowing us to.

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. Who We Share Your Personal Information With

We may have to share your personal information with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.

• Third parties such as:-
  • Anyone who is a joint customer on your account;
  • Credit reference agencies (see below);
  • Our service, system support and outsource providers;
  • Agents who help us collect what we are owed;
  • Geolocation service providers who may share the location of our asset with us for debt collection and asset recovery purposes;
  • Companies who assist us in verifying information about you in order to consider your application or manage your account;
  • Finance brokers and dealers who have referred your application for finance to us;
  • Companies we work with who offer products and services we think may be of interest to you (but only if you have given us your permission to do so);
  • Organisations that conduct customer satisfaction research on our behalf.  Specifically, we use an external company, Trustpilot A/S (“Trustpilot”) to collect your feedback which means that we may share your name, email address, phone number and agreement number with Trustpilot so that they can email you to invite you to review the service you have received from us;
  • Our legal or business advisors;
  • Banking schemes we use to manage your payments, such as Direct Debit, BACS and our card payment providers;
  • Law enforcement and crime prevention agencies;
  • Our insurers and financial institutions;
  • Regulatory bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority;
  • Organisations which offer dispute resolution services, such as the Financial Ombudsman Service.
  • Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law.

Credit Reference Agencies

We will share personal information with credit reference agencies, including:-

• Details of your application to or agreement with us;
• The payments you make to us;
• Any default or failure to keep to the terms of your agreement;
• Any change of name or address.

The three main credit reference agencies, Experian, TransUnion (formerly Call Credit) and Equifax, have together produced a joint Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN), which provides further details on how they use and share your personal information. You can find the most up to date version of the CRAIN here: http://www.experian.co.uk/crain/index.html

6. International Transfers

The information that we process about you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). We try to limit this where possible but it may be necessary where, for example, one of our business partners has a data centre outside Europe. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice and that the appropriate legal safeguards are in place prior to the transfer, in particular ensuring that any contracts between us and the recipient of the information have EU-approved standard data protection clauses.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal information out of the EEA.

7. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, and other third parties who have a business need to know.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Our website may include links to third-party websites including brokers and dealerships we are currently in partnership with. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow those third parties to collect or share information about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. We encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

8. Data Retention

How long will you use my personal information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We also retain personal information in case it is required in order to establish, bring or defend legal claims.

In general, we will keep your information for six years after the last occasion on which we have used it for one of the purposes set out in the table in section 4 above. We may however keep your information for longer if it is required for legal, regulatory or technical reasons.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal information (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.

Please see below for details of how you can ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection law in relation to your personal information.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to do so. This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

You have the right to:

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

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

9.3 Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no lawful reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information 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 information 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 notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

9.4 Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you 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 information 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.

9.5 Request restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the information’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the information is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the information even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your information but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

9.7 Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information, for example in relation to information about your health or if you have previously given us consent to contact you for marketing purposes. 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
products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

9.8 Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling. Please see the section on Automated Decision Making above.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at gdpr@billingfinance.co.uk.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

Complaints

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office where your personal information has or is being used in such a way that you believe does not comply with data protection laws. The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office are available at www.ico.org.uk. We would encourage you however to contact us before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.