Privacy Policy
loanfirst.co.uk is a trading name of Lend a Hand Finance Limited, who are authorised and registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a credit broker, reference number 619455. Lend a Hand Finance Limited is registered in England and Wales (Company number 08907370), Registered Office; Adamson House, Towers Business Park, Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, M20 2YY. Licensed by the Information Commissioners Office, (registration number ZA045221).
loanfirst.co.uk ensures any personal information that is obtained from you by visiting our website will be processed and maintained in line with accepted principles of good information handling and in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Contained within this statement and set out below are details of the type of information that we may hold about you, how we obtain and process any information we may have together with how we protect your privacy. loanfirst.co.uk may choose to amend the content of this privacy policy. If this occurs then we will update the policy and the revised policy will be posted on this website.
How We May Contact You As Part Of Your Loan Application
We, and our panel of lenders and credit brokers, will contact you with regard to your application. Unless you state otherwise you may be contacted via telephone, email, post, SMS and automated message. (see further section on 'How we keep you informed')
Lawful basis for collecting your personal data
We process your personal data on different bases, according the reason for which you have provided your data to us. When you are browsing the Website, we process your data on the basis that you have given your consent to such processing by accessing the Website. When you have applied for a loan via loanfirst.co.uk, we process this personal data on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in processing your data. When we have processed a loan application, we process your personal data on the basis that we need this information to fulfil our obligations under the contract we have entered into with you.
You can withdraw your consent to us or our panel of lenders and credit brokers contacting you or processing your personal data at any time by visiting loanfirst.co.uk and clicking the ‘opt out’ link on the website. Alternatively, you can withdraw your consent by contacting our Data Protection Officer using the address stated above or via email using: complaints@loanfirst.co.uk. If you change your mind about agreeing to us processing your personal data, this will not have any effect on the lawfulness of any processing we have carried out before you change your mind.
How You Contact Us
If you wish to telephone us please use the specified telephone numbers on our website under the Contact tab or link. Please note, your call may be recorded for training, quality and regulatory purposes. We pride ourselves in complete customer care and this gives us the opportunity to continuously improve and monitor our customer experience.
How We Keep You Informed
We may want to make contact with you at some point in order to keep you informed regarding updates to our credit brokerage service, this contact will be made via telephone, email or SMS. Our panel or lenders and credit brokers will contact you from the information we have shared with them to progress your loan application, any information that is shared to third parties is completely trusted for the purpose it is specified for and may use telephone, email, SMS or automated messages.
Obtaining Your Personal Data/Information
- You are free to access and browse our website loanfirst.co.uk at your convenience and do not have to provide any personal information/data, however I would like to refer you to the 'Cookies' section set out within this privacy policy.
- The personal information/data that we would normally collect from you is as follows:
- Name
- Residential address
- Residential status and time length of this status
- Date of birth
- Email address (if applicable)
- Telephone number (home, mobile, work)
- Income details
- Banking details
- Occupation details
The results of this will be used for our panel or lenders and credit brokers to provide you with the most appropriate loan options.
If you contact us with a question about our services, we may also collect the above personal information/data in this instance in order for us to respond to your enquiry.
Ensuring your personal details & or preferences are kept up to date.
It is your responsibility to ensure that any information we have on record for you is kept up to date and correct. If you do require any of your information to be updated then please contact us as soon as possible so we can ensure it is corrected.
If you require your preferences to be updated then please contact our Data Protection Officer as soon as possible. Please use the contact details on our website.
What Personal Information Do We Collect?
We collect personal information about you when you give this to us when applying for a loan product online. This might be, for example, so that our panel of lenders and credit brokers can obtain comparative quotes for the loan. In the course of providing the Services to you, we may also store information about how you use our Sites, for example, the pages viewed, the website from which you came to visit our Sites, changes you make to information you supply to us, details of the quotes you request and your applications, together with details of your financial information, for example, bank account or payment details.
We will store the information you provide and may use it to pre-populate fields on the Sites and to make it easier for you to use the Sites when making return visits.
We may monitor or record your Calls, Emails, SMS or other communications but we will do so in accordance with data protection legislation and other applicable law. Monitoring or recording will always be for business purposes, such as for quality control and training (e.g. where you call our compliance or customer service department), to prevent unauthorised use of our telecommunication systems and Sites, to ensure effective systems operation, to meet any legal obligation and/or to prevent or detect crime.
We will periodically review your personal information to ensure that we do not keep it for longer than is permitted by law.
How Do We Use Your Personal Information?
We may use your personal information:
- to enable you to access and use the Services;
- to personalise and improve aspects of our Services; when you submit an application with us, we may contact you via SMS, email or phone to ensure the service was you expected;
- for research, such as analysing market trends and customer demographics;
- to communicate with you, including some or all of the following:
- sending you information about products and services which we think may be of interest to you - this may include new product launches or information updates or new guidance about such items as short term loans, car loans / finance, opportunities to participate in market research;
- Provide you access to our panel of lenders and credit brokers – Our partners may carry out credit checks on you (see Who do we share your information with? below for further information on the type of checks that may be undertaken);
- to track sales, which may involve us sharing data with your product provider relating to the product(s) you have purchased. Your product provider may also send us information they hold relating to the product(s) you have purchased for this purpose;
- to match our data with data from other sources - we may validate and analyse your information and, in some cases, match it against information that has been collected by a third party to ensure that the information we hold about you is as accurate, consistent and as well-organised as possible. As well as ensuring that any marketing material that we send you is appropriate to your needs, this process also ensures that our Services continue to be as personalised and focused as possible;
- to circulate our customer survey review which are available to customers once an application has been completed;
- to enable you to share our content with others, e.g. by using any 'Email a friend' or 'Share this' functionality on our Sites.
Keeping you informed about the Services: You agree that we will be entitled to contact you (depending on your contact preferences) via email, post, telephone, SMS, or by other electronic means such as via social and digital media, in relation to directly related products, services and other offers that may interest you.
Who Do We Share Your Personal Information With?
When you complete an application, you consent to us disclosing your personal information to the following parties:
- loanfirst.co.uk or other trading styles of Lend a Hand Finance Limited such as loanchoices4u.co.uk and bestloan4me.co.uk (i) to communicate with you, including sending you information about products and services which may be of interest to you; (ii) to speed up form filling, or to personalise, or improve your experience on its website, mobile applications or other similar devices, channels or applications; or (iii) in accordance with its privacy policy.
- Lenders, Credit Brokers and Alternative Financial Solution Providers as detailed below. You can view details to how they will process your personal data within their privacy polices on their websites.
|
Company name |
Product/Service |
Trading name they will use |
|
TFLI |
Credit broker |
Bestloans.co.uk www.lowloans.co.uk www.lightfinance.co.uk www.cheaploans.co.uk www.platinumcash.co.uk www.loansyoulike.co.uk |
|
MediaBlankett |
Credit broker |
www.121money.com www.autodosh.co.uk www.supacompare.co.uk www.supafinance.com.uk www.supaloans.co.uk www.tangerineloans.com www.theloantree.co.uk |
- the Financial Conduct Authority and/or other regulatory/governing bodies, for the purposes of compliance monitoring;
Where permitted by data protection and privacy law, we may also disclose information about you (including electronic identifiers such as IP addresses) and/or access your account:
- if required or permitted to do so by law;
- if required to do so by any court, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Competition and Markets Authority or any other applicable regulatory, compliance, Governmental or law enforcement agency;
- if necessary in connection with legal proceedings or potential legal proceedings; and/or
- in connection with the sale or potential sale of all or part of our business.
If we reasonably believe false or inaccurate information has been provided and fraud is suspected, details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies to prevent fraud and money laundering.
FRAUD PREVENTION AGENCIES (FPA'S)
If we reasonably believe false or inaccurate information has been provided, including in relation to a person's identity, and fraud is suspected, details, including personal data may be passed to fraud prevention agencies to prevent fraud and money laundering.
Your details may be passed to statutory bodies, regulators, legal bodies, credit reference agencies, fraud prevention entities and identity and address verification agencies who may record and use your details. They may also disclose your information to other organisations for credit reference, debt tracing, and fraud and money laundering prevention purposes. If you have any queries regarding these uses, please contact the relevant organisation.
By submitting an application form on our site, you confirm that all of the information provided is true and accurate. You also, when applying, authorise the Lender or Finance Provider to use both fraud prevention and credit referencing agencies to help make relevant decisions.
What Is A Fraud Prevention Agency?
Fraud Prevention agencies collect, maintain and share information on any known or suspected fraudulent activity.
They work in the following ways with various organisations:
• If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details will be passed to Fraud Prevention Agencies
• Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information.
• FPA’s along with ourselves and other organisations, may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:
• Checking details on application s for credit and credit-related accounts, or other, facilities;
• Managing credit and credit-related accounts or other facilities;
• Recovering debt;
• Checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance; and,
• Checking details of job applicants and employees.
• We, and other organisations may also access and use the information recorded by FPAs from other countries.
Who Might Our Panel Of Lenders Share Your Personal Information with?
Some of our providers will use your personal information to assess your circumstances (including information about any third party who is named on the application) and verify the information that you have provided before providing a quote to you. Some providers may carry out checks with fraud prevention and credit reference agencies. Both public data (e.g. the electoral roll) and private data (e.g. your personal credit history) may be checked in this way. Some providers may carry out checks against data they already hold on you, (or is held by the company whose brand they administer the product for, or members of their group of companies) such as data from existing products, account data, data from previous product transactions, accounts you may hold with them or loyalty scheme data to share with lenders in order to determine your loan amount. If providers carry out these searches, a record of the search will appear on your credit report. Some providers may also check public and private higher education sources to obtain information about your educational background.
This information exchange allows providers to verify the information that is provided during the quote process (including information about any third party who is named on the policy), and also helps to detect fraudulent loans. These checks are not unique to users of our Services - they may also be carried out if you obtain quotes from other sources.
If you decide to enter into a loan, the information you have provided to us, together with any further information requested by, and supplied by you or us to the third party provider, will be held by the provider for the purposes set out in that provider's privacy policy. Therefore, you are strongly advised to read your chosen provider's privacy policy and satisfy yourself as to the purposes for which the provider will use your personal information before entering into the loan. We have no responsibility for the uses to which a provider puts your personal information.
What Cookies Do We Use?
A cookie is a very small text file placed on your computer or device. Cookies help us to:
a. understand browsing habits on the Sites;
b. understand the number of visitors to the Sites and the pages visited; and
c. remember you when you return to the Sites so we can provide you with access to previously saved quotes.
Most cookies are deleted as soon as you close your browser or mobile application - these are known as session cookies. Others, known as persistent cookies, are stored on your computer or device either until you delete them or they expire. Every time you visit loanfirst.co.uk, you will be kept signed in for a further 90 days. By using the Services, you consent to us using cookies.
You can choose to block or delete cookies through your browser settings. If you decide to block or delete our cookies, you will not be able to benefit from the full range of our Services and this may affect the performance of our Sites on your system. For more information on the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.
How Secure Is Our Site And What Steps Do We Take To Keep Your Personal Information Safe?
Our Sites use "Secure Socket Layer" (SSL Certificate) to protect your information and keeping information about you secure is very important to us. However, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. Sensitive information, for example, card details if used are encrypted to minimise the risk of interception during transit.
We do our best to keep the information you disclose to us secure. However, we can't guarantee or warrant the security of any information which you send to us, and you do so at your own risk. By using our Sites you accept the inherent risks of providing information online and will not hold us responsible for any breach of security.
Where will your personal data be held?
Your personal data may be held within the European Economic Area (EEA) or outside the EEA. If any personal data is transferred or stored outside of the EEA, we check whether the EU Commission has determined that it will afforded the same level of protection as it would within the EEA (this is called an adequacy decision). If it will not, we will ensure any such transfer is subject to appropriate safeguards (for example by putting appropriate contractual provisions in place with relevant third parties to provide us with reassurance about the security of your personal data) or is otherwise permitted (for example with your express consent to transfer) in accordance with the provisions of the GDPR.
Rights of Access To Your Personal Information
You have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulations . For example, we will always let you have a copy of the personal information we hold about you, if you request it from us in writing.
To make enquiries and/or exercise any of your rights set out in this Privacy Policy please contact our Customer Services Team at compliance@lendahandfinance.co.uk.
In order to ensure the Services we provide you continue to meet your needs we may ask you for feedback on your experience of using the Sites. Any feedback you provide will only be used as part of our programme of continuous improvement and will not be published on the Sites.
Note that it is your responsibility to check and ensure that all information, content, material or data you provide on the Sites is correct, complete, accurate and not misleading and that you disclose all relevant facts.
You have a right to have inaccurate personal data rectified, you can also request to have incomplete personal data completed (Right to rectification).
We will process your request within one month from date of receipt. If you wish to make any changes please contact our Customer Services Team at compliance@lendahandfinance.co.uk.
This Privacy Policy shall be governed and construed in all respects in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.
We reserve the right to amend or modify this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be published on the Sites.
You can also report any of your concerns to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number
Fax: 01625 524 510