DATA PRIVACY NOTICE
We take your privacy very seriously and we ask that you read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal data, your rights in relation to your personal data and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint. Italicised words in this privacy notice have the meaning set out in the Glossary of Terms at the end of this document. Who we are Open Financial Services collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are required to comply with data protection regulation and we are responsible as a data controller of that personal data for the purposes of those laws. When we mention “we”, “us” or “our” we are referring to Open Financial Solutions. Open Financial Services is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and our Financial Services number is 992612. We provide you with Financial Advice/Planning Services.
This can be across a wide range of different areas, including things like, mortgage and protection advice. Please refer to our Initial disclosure documents for full details.
The personal data we collect and use In the course of providing our services to you we may collect the following personal data when you provide it to us:
• contact information
• identity information
• financial information
• employment status
• lifestyle information
• health information
• data about criminal convictions or offences
• details of any vulnerability
• details of your dependents and/or beneficiaries under a policy (If you are providing information about another person we expect you to ensure that they know you are doing so and are content with their information being provided to us. You might find it helpful to show them this privacy notice and if they have any concern’s please contact us in one of the ways described below.)
• product details Information collected from other sources We also obtain personal data from other sources in the course of providing our intermediary services. Where we obtain this information from another party it is their responsibility to make sure they explain that they will be sharing personal data with us and, where necessary, ask permission before sharing information with us. The personal data we obtain from other sources may include the following:
• From product providers:
▪ product details
• From administrators of various existing financial arrangements:
▪ e.g. occupational pensions
• From identification and verification checking agencies:
▪ identity information
▪ sanction check information Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. How we use your personal data The below table sets out:
• how we use your personal data
• the lawful bases upon which we collect and use your personal data
• who we routinely share your personal data with Rationale/Reason for Processing Lawful Basis for Processing Primarily, we use your data and data about you and your family to provide financial advice to you and complete and administer transactions on your behalf. We use, analyse, and assess your data to maintain and develop our relationship with you. We use your data in this way either because we have a contract with you (for example, a contract to provide you with financial advice) or because it is in our legitimate interests to do so. To respond to complaints and seek to resolve them.
The FCA requires us to hold records in respect of advice and guidance we give to you for a statutory period and, accordingly, we will use this data in order to comply with our regulatory obligations. We may use information about your health to help us provide the most appropriate financial advice for you and may share this with third party product providers as described below:
We may use other professional advisers such as solicitors, mortgage brokers and accountants where appropriate. In some instances, the third – party product provider will require information about your health in order to provide an indication of costs, for example if you require life assurance. In other instances health information may improve the outcome for you, such as when obtaining a personalised annuity rate. Where required to do so by law, we will make sure we have consent from you before passing on any data relating to your health.
We may use your personal data to tell you about relevant products and offers “marketing”. We can only use your personal data to send you marketing messages if we have consent from you to do so or, in some cases, we can rely on a legitimate interest. You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time. We may record calls you make to us and will use this data for training and quality control purposes (where your call is to recorded we will tell you in advance). We use data in this way for a variety of reasons. It may be pursuant to a legal obligation and it is also in our legitimate interests to review recorded calls for quality control purposes. We may use your data to make checks with credit rating agencies to authenticate and verify your identity and credit status where you are interested in a product, which requires this. To detect, investigate, report and seek to prevent financial crime. To manage risk for us and our clients. To obey laws and regulations that apply to us.
We will make credit checks when it is in our legitimate interests and appropriate to do so in order to manage our financial risk. In some cases we will need to use your personal data to fulfil a legal obligation or comply with regulations that apply to us. This includes where we receive a legitimate request from a law enforcement agency or for the purposes of detecting fraud. For example, we undertake money-laundering checks on all our customers. Some services are provided to us by third parties such as processing business or obtaining compliance or regulatory advice, which warrant the disclosure of more than just your basic contact details. In such cases personal data held may be disclosed on a confidential basis, and in accordance with relevant data protection law.
Special category data Certain types of personal data are considered more sensitive and so are subject to additional levels of protection under data protection legislation. These are known as ‘special categories of data’ and include data concerning your health, racial or ethnic origin, genetic data and sexual orientation. Data relating to criminal convictions or offences is also subject to additional levels of protection.
We may process:
• health information and lifestyle information when providing intermediary services in relation to a protection insurance product; and/or
• criminal conviction or offence information when providing intermediary services in relation to a general insurance product In addition to the lawful basis for processing this information set out in the above table, we will be processing it either (i) for the purpose of advising on, arranging or administering an insurance contract or (ii) for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. In the course of our activities relating to the prevention, detection and investigation of financial crime, we may process criminal conviction or offence information.
Where we do so, in addition to the lawful basis for processing this information set out in the above table, we will be processing it for the purpose of compliance with regulatory requirements relating to unlawful acts and dishonesty.
Marketing: We may use personal data we hold about you to help us identify, tailor and provide you with details of products and services from us that may be of interest to you. We will only do so where we have obtained your consent and then have a legitimate business reason to do this and will do so in accordance with any marketing preferences you have provided to us. In addition, where you provided your consent, we may provide you with details of products and services of third parties where they may be of interest to you. You can opt out of receiving marketing at any time.
If you wish to amend your marketing preferences please contact us:
By phone:- 01254 351708
By email:- office@openfs.co.uk
By Post: Open Financial Services Ltd 55 Abbey Street, Accrington, BB5 1EH
In addition, you can opt out of receiving marketing at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any marketing emails. Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why We will tell you if providing some personal data is optional, including if we ask for your consent to process it.
In all other cases you must provide your personal data in order for us to provide you with intermediary services. How long your personal data will be kept We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate need to do so, for example:
• the minimum retention period is generally 5 years; we do however reserve the right to retain information for longer than the statutory periods as we may need the information to defend a future claim against us. For any Pension Transfer advice we will hold your information indefinitely.
• to provide you with a product or service you have requested us to provide
• to perform our contractual obligations to you;
• to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements;
• to defend or manage any claims or complaints between us, you and any relevant third party including taking legal advice in respect of such claims in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights or such claims. This would include complaints and claims which you may bring against us or which are submitted to a court, regulatory authority or ombudsman.
Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it. We recognise that in our normal course of business we will obtain special category personal data.
We confirm that this retention policy also applies to that data.
Transfer of your information out of the EEA: We will not transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area or to any organisation (or subordinate bodies) governed by public international law or which is set up under any agreement between two or more countries.
Your rights: You have legal rights under data protection regulation in relation to your personal data. These are set out under the below headings:
• To access personal data
• To correct /erase personal data
• To restrict how we use personal data
• To object to how we use personal data
• To ask us to transfer personal data to another organisation
• To object to automated decisions
• To find out more about how we use personal data We may ask you for proof of identity when making a request to exercise any of these rights. We do this to ensure we only disclose information or change your details where we know we are dealing with the right individual. We will not ask for a fee, unless we think your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Where a fee is necessary, we will inform you before proceeding with your request.
We aim to respond to all valid requests within one month. It may however take us longer if the request is particularly complicated or you have made several requests. We will always let you know if we think a response will take longer than one month.
To speed up our response, we may ask you to provide more detail about what you want to receive or are concerned about. We may not always be able to fully address your request, for example if it would impact the duty of confidentiality we owe to others or if we are otherwise legally entitled to deal with the request in a different way. To access personal data You can ask us to confirm whether or not we have and are using your personal data. You can also ask to get a copy of your personal data from us and for information on how we process it. To rectify / erase personal data You can ask that we rectify any information about you which is incorrect. We will be happy to rectify such information but would need to verify the accuracy of the information first.
You can ask that we erase your personal data if you think we no longer need to use it for the purpose we collected it from you. You can also ask that we erase your personal data if you have either withdrawn your consent to us using your information (if we originally asked for your consent to use your information), or exercised your right to object to further legitimate use of your information, or where we have used it unlawfully or where we are subject to a legal obligation to erase your personal data.
We may not always be able to comply with your request, for example where we need to keep using your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligation or where we need to use your personal data to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. To restrict our use of personal data You can ask that we restrict our use of your personal data in certain circumstances, for example
• where you think the information is inaccurate and we need to verify it;
• where our use of your personal data is not lawful but you do not want us to erase it;
Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023.
• where the information is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected but we need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
• where you have objected to our use of your personal data but we still need to verify if we have overriding grounds to use it.
• We can continue to use your personal data following a request for restriction where we have your consent to use it; or we need to use it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or we need to use it to protect the rights of another individual or a company.
To object to use of personal data You can object to any use of your personal data which we have justified on the basis of our legitimate interest, if you believe your fundamental rights and freedoms to data protection outweigh our legitimate interest in using the information. If you raise an objection, we may continue to use the personal data if we can demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate interests to use the information.
To request a transfer of personal data You can ask us to provide your personal data to you in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or you can ask to have it transferred directly to another data controller (e.g. another company). You may only exercise this right where we use your personal data in order to perform a contract with you, or where we asked for your consent to use your personal data. This right does not apply to any personal data which we hold or process outside automated means.
To contest decisions based on automatic decision making If we made a decision about you based solely by automated means (i.e. with no human intervention), and the decision made by us produces a legal effect concerning you, or significantly affects you, you may have the right to contest that decision, express your point of view and ask for a human review. These rights do not apply where we are authorised by law to make such decisions and have adopted suitable safeguards in our decision making processes to protect your rights and freedoms.
You can contact us for more information If you are not satisfied with the level of information provided in this privacy notice, you can ask us about what personal data we have about you, what we use your information for, who we disclose your information to, whether we transfer it abroad, how we protect it, how long we keep it for, what rights you have, how you can make a complaint, where we got your data from and whether we have carried out any automated decision making using your personal data. If you would like to exercise any of the above rights, please:
• email or write to:
By email:- office@openfs.co.uk
By Post: Open Financial Services Ltd 55 Abbey Street, Accrington, BB5 1EH
• let us have enough information to identify you, e.g. name, address, date of birth;
• let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill); and
• let us know the information to which your request relates. Keeping your personal data secure We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so. Our supervisory authority If you are not happy with the way we are handling your information, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office. It has enforcement powers and can investigate compliance with data protection regulation (www.ico.org.uk). We ask that you please attempt to resolve any issues with us before the ICO.
Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. How to contact us
Please contact Dorota Przybyl if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.
If you wish to contact:- Open Financial Services Ltd
By phone:- 01254 351708
By email:- office@openfs.co.uk
By Post: Open Financial Services Ltd 55 Abbey Street, Accrington, BB5 1EH
Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023. Glossary of Terms we, us or our Dorota Przybyl, Open Financial Solutions 55 Abbey Street, Accrington, BB5 1EH contact information these are details that can be used to contact a person, including title, first name, surname, personal telephone number, fax, email address, home address, country, postcode and city of residence. This may also include work contact information such as work telephone number, fax, work email and work address data controller means a natural or legal person (such as a company) which determines the means and purposes of processing of personal data. For example, we are your data controller as we determine how we will collect personal data from you, the scope of data which will be collected, and the purposes for which it will be used in the course of us providing you with intermediary services data protection regulation applicable data privacy and protection laws employment status this is information about your work, if you are employed, self-employed, unemployed, a student or on job seeker allowance FCA the Financial Conduct Authority, being the independent watchdog that regulates financial services financial information this is information relating to your financial status, including salary/income, outgoings/expenditure, tax rate and P60 health information this is information relating to your medical history, including symptoms, diagnoses, procedures and outcomes, as well as information about your height and weight. This could include previous and current or persistent medical conditions and family medical history. identity information this is any information that can be used to distinguish a person or verify their identity, such as name, date of birth, place of birth, gender, marital status, national identity card/number, passport, drivers licence and national insurance number intermediary services these are the services we provide to you in relation to various products lifestyle information this includes both work and leisure behaviour patterns. Most relevant to your products may be your smoker status, alcohol consumption, health, retirement age and exercise habits product this is an investment, pension, mortgage, protection and/or general insurance product in respect of which we provide intermediary services to you product provider a company which provides investment, pension, protection and/or general insurance products (for a list of product providers which we work with, please contact us – see How to contact us above) sanction check information vulnerability this is information relating to your politically exposed persons (PEPs) status and Her Majesty’s Treasury financial sanctions status, which is recorded to prevent fraud and money laundering a vulnerable consumer is someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to detriment, particularly when an advisory firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care. These clients are more likely to suffer severe detriment if something goes wrong. Details of vulnerability fall into the following categories: health; resilience (financial); life events; and capability (financial knowledge/ confidence) Data Privacy Notice v1.0 – September 2023.