The personal information we collect from you depends on the product you apply for, or the service that we provide to you. We will collect this information from you through websites and mobile applications. We will only collect information that we actually need, or where we’re required to collect the information to enable us to perform our legal or contractual obligations necessary to provide you with the products or services, or where we have your permission. We may also collect information via third parties.

The information we collect from you directly or about you from a third party may include the following:

• Your personal details (for example, your name and date of birth)
• Your business details (for example, your company name and registered address)
• An overview of your business (for example, the products/services you offer)
• Your revenue model (including annual turnover)
• Your loan purpose and utilisation
• Your expansion plans
• Marital status
• Your address and address history and general location
• Your contact details (for example, your phone number and email address)
• Special category personal information such as health information (see below)
• Financial information (for example income and expenditure).
• Residential Status (for example if you are a homeowner or tenant).
• Property details
• Employment information including occupation
• Driving licence details
• Vehicle details
• Identification details such as passport.
• Energy and gas consumptions
• Information on how you use our website, mobile app, products and services

Special Category Personal Information

• We may collect special category personal information and that will depend on the product or service you are applying for.
• The UK data protection law defines some personal information as “sensitive data” or “special categories of data”. This includes information about physical or mental health, sexual life, religious beliefs, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, trade union membership or biometric data (that is, computerised details used to identify you through your unique characteristics, for example through fingerprint scanning and facial recognition).
• We may need to collect this information, for example, when you apply for an insurance quote, or if it may help us to provide you with a better service.  If we need to collect and process this type of information about you, by providing the information you are giving permission for us and any other third party to process this sensitive information as set out in this privacy policy. (We do not need your permission if we have to process this type of information by law). We can only use any personal information about you that relates to criminal convictions or offences if this is allowed by law.

Information about other people

• If you provide personal information about someone else, for example when a joint application is made, you must do so with the permission of the other person. If you apply for a product or service jointly with another person (for example, a joint loan application), both your personal information and the information of the joint applicant, including any information about the service provided may be shared with the other person.
• We will use the personal information about the other person only in the ways as described in this privacy policy.

We can collect your information in a number of ways.

• When you make an application or enquiry to us either by phone, email, our websites, by a third party or by any other means
• Information received from a third party, for example when we run checks with a third party, such as a credit reference agency or fraud prevention agency, or where you have previously agreed for your information to be shared with us, for example, if you have been introduced to us by another company
• When you participate in market research, consumer feedback, competitions and promotions provided by us, or on our behalf
• By adding reviews or interacting with us using social media 
• When we may need to obtain up to date information about you to meet our legal or regulatory obligations
• Where you have given permission for your information to be provided to us
• We may receive information from other people if you give permission for them to give us your information.
• We may also collect technical information about you based on your use of the website or mobile app, for example each time you visit the website or use the mobile app, your (IP) Internet Protocol address, browser type and version, products and services you viewed or searched.  For more information, please read our Cookies Policy.

We can only use your personal information where it falls into one or more of the following categories:

1. it is necessary to enter into or fulfil a contract we have with you or which you have requested to enter into;
2. you have provided your consent;
3. we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so;
4. it is necessary to carry out a task which is in the public interest;
5. it is necessary to protect your vital interests; or
6. it is in our legitimate interest to do so, and it is not against your rights.

If you decide not to go ahead with any of the services we offer and/or provide we will still process your personal information we have collected for the purposes set out in Other Purposes for Processing your Personal Data below.

To allow us to provide services to you, we will be required to collect and process your personal and business data as set out below.

Other purposes for processing your personal information

Websites, Mobile Applications and Marketing

To help us understand you better and provide you with information about other products which may be suitable and relevant, we will use your personal information to create a profile of you and your circumstances. This allows us to provide more relevant, accurate and tailored services to you. For example, we may assess your income and spending to work out whether you may be able eligible to apply for a personal loan through us or our broker partners’ panel of lenders. We believe we have a legitimate interest to do this in accordance with your rights. We may then use the profile we have created to tailor any marketing communications to you. If you don’t want us to use your personal information in this way, you can contact us to let us know.

If you create a CredAbility account, there are types of information we will collect and process for the purposes of providing our services to you as agreed in our terms and conditions. This may include products you viewed or searched.

Reviews and Market Research

If we have a copy of your personal information, we or a third party research company acting on our behalf may contact you to ask you to provide a review of the services you’ve received or if we are carrying out market research which may help us design future products and services or help improve our current services. Although this information would really help us, you don’t have to provide it unless you’re happy to. We consider it is in our legitimate interests to contact you in this way for market research purposes.

Legal or Regulatory Obligations

We must process your personal information if we have to do this by law or under any regulations that apply (for example, to keep to anti-money laundering regulations).

Responding to Complaints or Enquiries

If you contact us with an enquiry or complaint, we will use your personal information to investigate the complaint and deal with your enquiry. We have a legal and regulatory obligation to deal with complaints appropriately.

Analysis Purposes

As part of our legitimate interest to develop our business and our products, we will use your personal information to assess our performance as a business and to analyse statistics. We will use as little personal information as we can to achieve this. We may also share this analysis with third parties who provide us with services and if we have to share the information under a contract we have with them.

Location Information

To help you use some of our online services we may ask for your permission to use your current location, for example, to help you fill in an address if you need to do this to receive part of our service or on an application form. You do not have to give us permission to use your location if you do not want to. If you do allow us to use this information, we will only store it for the duration of your online session and we will not share it with anyone else. When you use our website or mobile app we may also use information about your general location, for example the nearest town. We may use this information for customer-analysis purposes.

An automated decision is one which we rely on a computer or system to assess the information you provide to us to make a decision about you. This may include:

• assessing your eligibility for a product or service, for example a credit check for a credit card or loan application
• detecting any fraudulent activity which may be taking place, or there is a risk that it could take place
• checking identity and residency statuses

If we do make an automated decision about you, in some cases you have the right to ask that we do not make our final decision based solely on the automated decision, and you can also object to the automated decision and ask that someone reviews it. If you want to do this you’d need to contact us or use the contact information which will be provided to you once you’ve received the automated decision.

In addition to those third parties referenced in Section 3, we may also share your personal information with the following organisations to help us provide our services:

• IT Service Providers who provide IT platforms or other IT services
• Payment Service companies that process transactions such as Direct Debits or card transactions (where applicable)
• Communication providers (e.g. telephone line providers and email and text service providers)
• Printers who print the letters and information packs which we send to you
• Advertisers and social media companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter for our social media accounts, advertising and profiling purposes, or where we can contact you using your social media account
• Service Providers and Suppliers - In order to make certain services available to you, we may need to share your personal details e,g. to enable a supplier to send you an electronic gift card if you have taken part in a promotional campaign.
• Market Research companies such as Feefo to help us improve our products and services.
• Third party partners who may have introduced you to our services or where we may introduce you to or promote their financial products or services. This may include fellow TMG group companies. These companies help us to provide services to you. We will have a contract in place with any provider who directly provides us with such services to ensure that they comply with their data protection obligations and ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place. We regularly monitor our service providers to ensure they comply with our contractual obligations in relation to the processing and security of your personal information.

We may also share your personal information where we have your consent to do so or where we’re required to do so under a legal or regulatory obligation or court order, such as the police, local authorities or the courts.

The personal information we have collected from you may be shared with fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud, money-laundering and terrorist financing and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. Further details of how your information will be used by us and these fraud prevention agencies, and your data protection rights, can be found by contacting us or email us at contact us

We use publicly available social media platforms to promote our services, to provide updates and to share any news and promotional updates. We may collect personal information from these social media platforms, for example, if you post a message on our Facebook page. By providing any of your information to us through these platforms you should be aware that:

• the social media web pages are publicly available, and you must not provide any personal or sensitive information on our pages that are accessible to the public, such as your account information. We may ask you for your account information via a private message to identify you and to service any request you make; and
  
  
• each social media platform will process any personal information you provide through the platform and will be processed in accordance with its own privacy policy. The privacy policies are available to view on each social media platform.

We will only share your personal information outside the UK where we have your consent; to comply with a legal obligation; or where we work with a business partner to enable us to provide you with our services, and they process information outside of the UK.

If we do share any of your personal information outside of the UK, we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used within the UK to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place. This may include putting in place a contract with the business partner that means they must protect the personal data to the same standards as it would within the UK (this may include an International Data Transfer Agreement), or only share the data to a business partner outside the UK or in a non-EEA country where the privacy laws provide the same protection as within the UK or the EEA or where appropriate technical and organisational measures are in place to ensure the data is protected and secure.

More information on this can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

We take the protection of personal information very seriously and we will maintain appropriate measures to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information you have provided. Such measures include:

• Company security policies and standards
• staff security awareness
• role based access controls to prevent unauthorised access to the information
• encryption and anonymisation technology
• anti-malware technologies
• security monitoring
• security testing
• secure archiving and deletion
• compliance with industry regulation and legislation

To help us keep you up to date about the products and services that we provide to you and to ensure that you’re kept fully informed, in line with relevant consent you may have given, we may contact you by letter, telephone, email, text message or other electronic means.

If you start an application for a product or service through us, we will attempt to contact you shortly after if you were unable to complete your application for whatever reason, to see if you wish to proceed.

If you enter into a product for a fixed period of time, we may contact you to remind you that the product is up for renewal and/or discuss a renewal of the product where this may be available.

If you do not want to be contacted in a particular way then you can request this at any time, but if we are providing a service to you, we do need to be able to send you communications. This can often be due to a legal or regulatory requirement.

It is important that you keep us up to date when you change your contact details or any other personal information, to ensure that we use your up-to-date contact information and that we use accurate information about you.

You have certain rights under data protection legislation. These include:

Access to your personal information

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”. You can request this information by contacting us as noted in the Contact Us section below.

Before providing this information to you or to another person or company where you have requested this personal information to be sent to, we may ask for proof of identity or ask sufficient questions to enable us to locate the information and ensure that we’re only providing it where you have given your agreement.

Right to have your personal information corrected

If the personal information we hold about you is incorrect you have the right to request that we correct this.

Right to stop or limit the processing of the data we carry out

You have the right to stop us from using your personal information or limit the way in which we process your information at any time if we are no longer entitled to do so. You may also request that your personal information is deleted. There may be occasions where we are unable to delete the data due to our legal or regulatory obligations however we will discuss this with you if you request for your information to be deleted.

Portability

In some cases you may be able to request for your information to be provided to yourself or another company in a format that can be processed electronically by yourself or the other company. If you want to request this you’ll need to contact us, and we may ask for proof of identity or ask sufficient questions to enable us to locate the information and ensure that we’re only providing this information where you have given your consent to do so.

Whilst you continue to be our customer or where you have successfully taken a product, 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. The product specific information will set out how long your personal information will normally be kept for.

Your personal information will normally be kept for at least 6 years, starting from the date when we are no longer providing you with a service. Telephone calls will be retained for at least 6 years from the date the call was made.

If you do not go ahead with any product or service offered by us, we would usually keep your personal information for at least 4 years where you have given your consent to receive marketing or promotional messages from us.

After this time, where we no longer need to retain the data for legitimate purposes, we will delete the information or anonymise the data so that it cannot be linked back to you.

We may contact you to let you know about other offers, products and services that we provide or that are provided by our third-party partners which we think you may be interested in or that may benefit you. We may do this through post, emails, text messages, telephone, push notifications, social media or other electronic means.

You can easily let us know at any time if you would no longer like to receive these marketing messages. You can contact us by using the details on our website, or unsubscribing using the link or information within recent marketing messages you have received from us. Alternatively you can opt out of receiving marketing contact by contacting us at: contactus@binq.co.uk.

When you visit our website or similar financial service websites Google may use our advertisements promoting our products and services which may appear on other third-party websites you visit across the internet for remarketing purposes, including cross-device remarketing. Google and other third parties will use cookies to tailor advertisements for website users based on their previous visit to our website. More information about cookies can be found in our Cookie Policy. We do not have any control over the advertisements you see on other third-party websites however you can request to opt out or customise these advertisements by using the Google Ads Preference Manager.

We may record any telephone calls you make to us or we make to you or any other third party. This is for training, monitoring and quality purposes and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. Some telephone calls may be observed by staff for training and development purposes.

We may keep a copy of the telephone calls for at least 6 years from the date the telephone call was made.

If you have any questions or queries about how we use your personal information, or if you are unhappy with how we handle your personal information and would like to make a complaint, you can contact us using the address or email below:

Data Protection Officer
Binq Business Limited
White Collar Factory,
1 Old Street Yard,
London
EC1Y 2AS

Email: contactus@binq.co.uk

If you remain unhappy with how we have dealt with your complaint regarding how we handle your personal information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can find their details on their website at https://ico.org.uk/

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time and any changes will be published on our website. If we make any important or significant changes to the way we may collect and use your personal information we will endeavour to notify you of this change.