How your Personal Information is used by Guardian Finance Limited

Who we are

Your personal information will be held by Guardian Finance Limited.  If you have any questions or would like to find out more about how we use your personal information, you can contact us at our registered office: 207 Barkby Road, Leicester LE4 9HZ. Telephone:
0116 276 6631; Fax: 0116 246 0447; E-mail Address: enquiries@guardian-finance.co.uk.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates.  If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.  Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

How your data is protected?

Under the European General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) and the UK Data Protection Act (‘DPA’) for Guardian Finance Limited as ‘data controller’ to use your personal information, we must have a lawful basis for doing so, including the sharing of your information outside Guardian Finance Limited, for example with Credit Reference Agencies. The lawful basis for which we use your data falls into one or more of these GDPR and DPA requirements:

  • To enter into a contract with you, or
  • When it is our legal duty, or
  • Where there is a legitimate interest, or
  • When you consent to it

Below is a list of the ways in which we will use your personal information, the lawful basis we rely on to process it and where we process based on legitimate interests, what these are.

What we do with personal data

We need to collect your personal information in order to enter into a finance contract with you.

Under GDPR and DPA, the lawful basis for processing your personal information is as follows

  • To provide you with our products and services
    • To allow us to process your application, we will use your personal information to assess your suitability for finance
    • Lawful Basis: Fulfilling a Contract, Legal Duty, Legitimate Interests - promoting responsible lending and helping to prevent over indebtedness; to prevent, detect, investigate and report financial crime
  • To manage our agreement and relationship with you
    • We will process your information to ensure that you are able to fulfil your obligations under your credit agreement and to communicate with you to provide and manage your needs.
    • Lawful Basis: Fulfilling a Contract, Legal Duty, Legitimate Interests - to manage your agreement with us and ensure repayments are made and received
  • To meet our Legal Obligations
    • We may process your information for the prevention, detection and investigation of fraud and money laundering and to comply with laws and regulations that we have to adhere as a regulated credit provider; and to meet our obligations if we are required to disclose information by reason of any law, regulation or court order
    • Lawful Basis: Legal Duty
  • To send you details of our products and services
    • To provide you with information on other products and services we can offer you
    • Lawful Basis: Consent, Legitimate Interests - to send information on similar products where you have not previously objected where these products and services may be of genuine interest to you, for example when your current loan or Hire Purchase agreement is repaid or where there are possible alternatives available to you during the term of your loan or Hire Purchase agreement

The types (or categories) of personal information we will collect about you and process are as follows:

  • Personal Identifiers - Information which can identify you, such as your name and date of birth
  • Contact Details - Information on where you live and how we may contact you to discuss your agreement.
  • Financial Details - Your financial position, history and bank account information
  • Employment - Your current employment status and employment history
  • Documentary Data - Documents provided by you, for example Passport, Driving Licence, Payslips, Bank Statements
  • Public Records and Open Data - Information about you on public records such as the Electoral Register and information which is openly available on the internet
  • Location Data - Information we receive from your device (mobile phone, computer etc.) when you visit our website or log on to your online account
  • Special Category Data - Certain personal information you provide to us is more sensitive and needs more protection. We will only collect and process this type of data with your consent. Examples of this type of data may include information you provide in relation to a vulnerability which we need to be aware of to provide support and correctly manage our relationship with you

Where we collect your personal information

We may collect personal information directly from you when you apply for our products and services or when you contact us to discuss your finance agreement.

Your personal information may also be provided to us by a third party, such as a dealership when you visit them to purchase a vehicle.

Further organisations where we may collect your data from include:

  • Credit Reference Agencies
  • Fraud Prevention Agencies
  • Public information sources such as Companies House
  • Agents working on our behalf

Sharing your personal information

We do not share your personal information with any third party unless we have a legal obligation or legitimate interest in doing so, for example:

  • Agents (Tracing, Debt Collection, Vehicle Repossession and Car Auction) who assist us in ensuring you fulfil your obligations under your finance agreement
  • Government and Law enforcement agencies
  • Regulators and other authorities (such as the DVLA)
  • Independent Vehicle Inspection companies
  • Feedback service providers
  • Communication Management Companies
  • Payment System Providers, including the Direct Debit Scheme and BACS
  • Legal and professional advisors including auditors
  • Courts to comply with legal requirements
  • Dealerships
  • Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention Agencies

Credit Reference Agencies

When you apply for a product or service, we will carry out credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies (CRAs)

To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your credit application and about your financial situation and financial history. CRAs will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information and fraud prevention information.

We will use this information to:

  • Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product;
  • Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us;
  • Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering;
  • Manage your account(s);
  • Trace and recover debts;
  • Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs.

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.

If you are making a joint application, we will link your records together, so you should make sure you discuss this with them, and share with them this information, before lodging the application. CRAs will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or your partner successfully files for a disassociation with the CRAs to break that link.

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail within the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN).

This notice is accessible from each of the three CRA links below:

Fraud Prevention Agencies

General

Before we provide services, goods or financing to you, we undertake checks for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity. These checks require us to process personal data about you.

The personal data you have provided, we have collected from you, or we have received from third parties will be used to prevent fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity.

Details of the personal information that will be processed include, for example: name, address, date of birth, contact details, financial information, employment details, device identifiers including IP address and vehicle details.

We and fraud prevention agencies may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.

We process your personal data on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify identity, in order to protect our business and to comply with laws that apply to us. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of the services or financing you have requested.

Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time, and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years.

Data Security

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we always will do our best to protect your personal data and to comply with our security obligations pursuant to the GDPR and DPA, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.

Transfers of Data

Your personal data will not be transferred outside the UK.

If in the event Guardian Finance Limited are required to transfer data outside the UK we will:

  • Only do so with either your consent, or where we have a legal basis for processing your data
  • Put in place a contract with the organisation to ensure the data is protected to the same standards as if it were still within the UK.

How long we retain your personal information

We will keep your personal information for as long as you are a customer of Guardian Finance Limited.

Once you are no longer a customer, we may retain your personal information for up to 7 (seven) years. The reason for this is:

  • Adherence to regulations applicable to us
  • To respond to questions or complaints from when you were a customer

Your rights

The GDPR and DPA provide the following rights for individuals:

  1. The right to be informed
  2. The right of access
  3. The right to rectification
  4. The right to erasure
  5. The right to restrict processing
  6. The right to data portability
  7. The right to object
  8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

Here we briefly explain what these are in the context of Guardian Finance Limited.

This Privacy Statement and our application and loan documentation explain the collection and use of your personal data, including our purposes for processing your personal data, our retention periods for that personal data, and who it will be shared with.

Accessing, correcting and deleting your information

You have the right to access the personal information we hold on you by writing to us at the address provided in this Privacy Statement. You also have the right to have your data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete, and if we have no legal or legitimate justification in retaining your data, you may have a right to request its deletion or to restrict us from processing your information if it is incorrect or no longer required. However, there may be legal reasons as to why we may need to keep your data.

Right to object

You have a right to object to the processing of your information in cases where we do not have legitimate grounds for processing your personal data.

Data Portability

You have the right to ask us to provide you with a copy of the personal information you provided to us or to request that we transfer this data to another organisation in a format that can be easily re-used.

Marketing

It is not our policy to use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor do we pass your data to any third parties for marketing purposes. If however, you would like to be updated on our range of products and services, please contact us.

Decision making and profiling

Our credit scoring model uses three sources to ensure a fair and well informed outcome is achieved;

  • The details you submit on your application form
  • Information held and supplied from credit reference agencies
  • Any data that we may already hold that relates to you

Cookies

We want to make your experience of using our website easy, useful and reliable. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide general information to the owners of the site.

We use Google session cookies to get a better understanding of how visitors use our website. This will then improve the user experience on our website and help us ensure we provide the best experience for our website visitors.

These cookies only collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of website visitors and the pages visited. No personal information is collected or stored by Guardian Finance Limited.

By viewing or continuing to view our website you agree to the use of these cookies. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

If you want to find out more information about cookies generall, go to www.allaboutcookies.org or to find out about removing them from your browser, go to www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html

What to do if you wish to make a complaint

If you are unhappy with how we have processed your personal information, please contact us

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’), which regulates the processing of personal data in the UK. You can do this by phone on 0303 123 1113, or via the ICO website.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this privacy policy in the future will be posted on our website. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to this privacy policy. Any printed copies of our privacy policy may similarly be updated or changed.

18 May 2018