Why we collect information about you?

We collect data about you:

• to set up and then administer your accounts
  
• to let you know about other relevant products and services
  
• to update our customer records
  
• to carry out statistical analysis to enable us to improve our products and services
  
• for crime prevention and for legal and regulatory compliance.

How Finance Direct will collect and use your personal data.

Finance Direct collects and processes your personal data in order to provide you with mortgage services.

As a credit brokerage, Finance Direct will use your personal data provided on your completed application form to carry out these functions.

• Process the application itself by reference to lender information
  
• Provide your information to a lender for them to assess your suitability
  
• Provide your information to a credit reference agency for searches to be made.
  
• Complete the credit agreement on behalf of the lender
  
• Pass your application in its entirety to an alternate broker when Finance Direct cannot assist in brokering your mortgage.
  
• Resolve complaints and queries where necessary.
  
• Provide your information to regulatory bodies in co-operation with them in the monitoring and control of the UK and EU financial services industry.

We may also use your information, with your consent where applicable, to:

• Offer you other products and services which are available from or via Finance Direct
  
• Contact you in the future to offer you products or services that we feel may be of interest to you
  
• Enable us to pass your details to another broker in the future with a view to them offering you products or services they feel may be of interest to you.
  
• Permit access to your information by any regulatory authority where required by law and to ensure that we are complying with all regulatory requirements when processing your data.

In some instances, we will be unable to provide you with a product or service, if you do not provide us with the necessary information or give us your permission to process and store that information.

We will keep your information for as long as you allow us to do outside of our regulatory and statutory requirements and we will contact you on a regular basis to check that you still consent to being contacted by us regarding our product and services. Like all data processing companies we have a duty to keep your information secure, up to date and accurate.

If in your loan application you have confirmed that you are financially linked or wish to become financially linked with another individual, you are declaring that you are entitled to

(a) disclose information about that person and / or anyone else referred to by you and
(b) that you authorise Finance Direct and any lender involved in the application to search, link and / or record information at credit reference agencies about you and / or anyone else referred to by you.

Complaint Handling.

Finance Direct may in the course of an investigation into a complaint raised by you release information to the ombudsman and other parties within the boundaries of the complaint (e.g. the complaint involves your insurance policy we seek information from your insurance provider) for the purposes of resolving the complaint in a fair and expedient manner and the prevention of fraud.

System testing

We are continually looking to improve our systems to provide a more efficient service. As part of this process, it may be necessary to use information provided by our customers for the purpose of system testing. We will ensure that any testing is carried out in a secure and controlled environment.

Prevention of financial crime

Finance Direct will check your details with fraud prevention agencies and if you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we will record this.

These records will be shared with other organisations and used by us and them to:

• help make decisions about credit and credit related services, and about motor, household, credit, life and other insurance proposals and claims for you and members of your household
  
• trace debtors, recover debt and prevent fraud and to manage your accounts
  
• check your identity to prevent money laundering, unless you provide satisfactory proof of identification

The fraud prevention agencies may use your records for statistical analysis.

Cookies

We use 'Session' or temporary cookies to support some of the security features of this site and to track visitors. These cookies will be deleted shortly after you leave our site or within 90 days. You will be unable to use our Online Services if you do not have cookies enabled on your browser.

Telephone calls

We may record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us, to increase your security, to improve our services, to resolve complaints, to meet certain regulatory responsibilities and for staff training purposes.

Emails

If you email us we will keep a record of your contact and your email address. In addition to specific services that you request, we may also email you with details of relevant products and services, as well as information about the Society. If you do not want us to do this please let us know.

For security we will not include any confidential information about you in any email we send to you, for example we will not quote account and balance information in an email to you. We would also suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum.

Web Beacons

A Web beacon is a graphic image (such as a pixel tag or clear GIF) that is placed on a web page or in an e-mail message to monitor user activity (such as whether the web page or e-mail message is read or clicked). They are often invisible because they are very small in size. They are also used on many web pages for alignment purposes. We sometimes use Web beacons to provide an independent accounting of how many people visit our websites or to gather statistics about browser usage at our websites. Some of our web pages and HTML-formatted e-mail newsletters use Web beacons in conjunction with cookies. It is difficult for you to limit the use of Web beacons because there is no easy way to distinguish their use from alignment and other purposes. They may be loaded from a different web server than the rest of the page.

Credit Referencing Agencies.

Finance Direct like most lending companies and brokers uses credit referencing agencies as part of the application process. Credit referencing agencies keep a wide range of information in their databases. The main credit reference agencies are:

Call credit plc - Consumer services team, 1 Park Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire. LS3 1EP

Experian Limited - Consumer Help Service, P.O. Box 7710, Nottingham. NG80 7WE

Equifax Plc. P.O. Box 1140, Bradford. BD1 5US

The information contained within the databases includes electoral roll information (also known as the voters roll), records of most county court judgements and bankruptcies. They also retain information relating to previous and existing credit and record searches made. The length of time the information is held varies due to legislative requirements.

Other agencies with which we may process data with.

CIFAS.

Reports from and to CIFAS relate to fraud and fraud avoidance and are available to members of CIFAS. The reports contain information indicating whether or not fraud or attempted fraud has been notified by a lender. The information may not relate directly to an individual, it may relate to an impersonation of that individual. The data held may be used to help the decision process on credit and insurance applications.

CML Repossession Register

The council of mortgage lenders’ repossession register is available to council members through the main credit reference agencies. If you have had a property repossessed or given it up voluntarily to a lender it will appear on this register.

CAIS, Insight and Share

These are credit account information sharing schemes, which are operated by the principal credit reference agencies.

GAIN

A file may show a “gone away” marker indicating that a member of the “Gone Away Information Network” has reported that they cannot trace a customer who is in arrears with payments. Alternatively, the marker may indicate that a new address which the “gone away” has been traced to.

Hunter

Files in this register contain detailed information on applications made and loans given. It is aimed at tracing fraudsters who use different combinations of information to obtain credit dishonestly. It checks and counter checks information given on application forms.

Use of information after the application has been made.

Finance Direct may use your information for statistical analysis about credit, insurance, company performance and fraud.

Information may be provided to “other agencies” listed above. This will help lenders and other subscribers to those agencies trace debtors, recover debt, prevent fraud and to check your identity to prevent money laundering. In particular, any difference between the information given by you or other brokers and any later information discovered by the lender is likely to be noted.

The information commissioner has published a leaflet in regards to credit and this can be read here (link to credit explained leaflet)

Right to Information.

Finance Direct will supply a copy of the personal data held in regards to yourself, upon receipt of a written request and a cheque for £10 payable to Finance Direct (UK) Ltd to cover administration costs. You need to send a request to the Compliance Manager, Finance Direct (UK) Ltd, The Works, 5 Union Street, Manchester M12 4JD

We will respond to your request within 40 days of receipt of the request.

It should be noted that a data access request does not include the rights to explanations of the process by which decisions are made nor the procedures followed.

Right to Object.

Every individual has the right to object at any time on legitimate grounds in relation to the processing of their data by Finance Direct.

Where there is an objection made and it is justified, Finance Direct will stop processing of the personal data at issue of that individual until further notice, unless required by law to do otherwise.

Debt recovery process:

If you default on your fee agreement with us and we fail to reach an agreement to repay the debt, we will give you 28 days notice before recording a default with the credit reference agencies. The default will remain on the credit reference agency records for a period of 6 years.

In addition we may authorise a third party such as a debt collection agent or a solicitor to act on our behalf in the recovery of the debt. If we decide to take this action we will inform you before we disclose your details to them.

If we are unable to locate you to discuss the situation, we may pass your details to a tracing agency.

Disclosures.

Finance Direct does not sell, rent, share, trade or disclose personal data it keeps relating to an individual to other parties without the prior written consent of the relevant individual, with the exception of companies within Finance Direct and any of the suppliers with which Finance Direct has engaged to provide services and are involved in the processing of personal data on Finance Direct’s behalf.

Not withstanding the above, Finance Direct reserves the right to disclose personal data to law enforcement authorities and agencies, relevant regulatory bodies, as required by law or regulation.

Not withstanding the above, in the event of a complaint about our services Finance Direct reserves the right to disclose personal data or information that comes into our possession to other parties who have provided services in relation to the service Finance Direct has provided, for the purpose of fair and swift resolution of the complaint.

Not withstanding the above, in the event of sale of its business, or part thereof, where it is necessary to do so in order to affect the sale of a data subject’s personal data in connection with such a business sale.

Use of information by Lenders.

Lenders to whom the application is passed will make wider use of the information than Finance Direct. If you receive any lender documents, they should include a statement, such as this one, telling you what they will do with the information they receive. This statement will usually be near any signature box, or clearly placed on the front page. If the information is not by the signature box there may be an “information padlock” sign like the one shown below drawing your attention to where the information is.

Both ourselves and lenders will check the information supplied on mortgage applications with the data held by credit reference agencies. The lender may search on more than one occasion. Every time an application search is made it is recorded by the agency and disclosed to other organisations on any later searches.

Lenders will use the information obtained in the credit reference searches to help them assess the application and they may use the result of any search in a credit scoring system. A credit scoring system is a system by which points are given for various factors in an individual’s circumstances such as your age, your job, the number of types of credit you have, how you have repaid previous and current credit. Generally each lender uses a different method of scoring depending upon their interpretation of the importance of different factors and the level of risk they are willing to accept.

The lender may conduct further searches with the same or other agencies to satisfy itself that all the data on the application is accurate and the application has been made by yourself. If it suspects the information is inaccurate it may report it to a fraud prevention agency. Please ensure that the information you provide is accurate as lenders will check with fraud prevention agencies and if you give false or inaccurate information and the lender suspects fraud it will record this.

Sometimes a lender may not wish to lend. This may be for a number of reasons. The lender does not have to tell you exactly why you have been refused a mortgage and you can ask them for how the decision was determined. If the method was an automated or computerised credit scoring system you have the right to a personal, non automated review. You are also entitled to know the main reason for the decision.

No one has a right to receive a loan. Loans are granted at the discretion of the lending company.

Sensitive information

As a Finance Direct (UK) Ltd customer, there may be times when you give us sensitive information. We may share it with other parts of the Finance Direct (UK) Ltd and our subcontractors to keep your records up to date. The Data Protection Act defines information about the following as "sensitive" (racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, sexual life, criminal proceedings and offences). Depending on your circumstances we may ask for "sensitive" details. We will only use this information to provide the service you require and we will ask for your explicit consent.

If you'd like to change your details

If you would like to change the details we hold about you, please contact us.
We may require an original signature for identification purposes and cannot, therefore, accept any email instructions.

We reserve the right to update and/or amend this policy from time to time without notice.