What personal data will we need to collect?

To be able to provide you with Debt Advice we need to collect certain categories of personal data. This will include:

• Contact details – so that we can contact you about and process your enquiry
• The people you owe money to and your property and assets – so we fully understand your financial situation and give you personalised advice that’s tailored to you
• Your Income and expenditure – so that we can accurately work out what you can afford to pay towards your debts and make sure the solution we recommend is the right one for you
• Personal circumstances – such as your employment, living arrangements and financial dependents, so that we can understand and give you advice about how each of the available debt solutions could affect you
• Special personal information – only with your permission and where this is relevant to your financial situation and how a debt solution needs to work for you, or where we have a legal right to do so.

With your permission, we may obtain and use information from your credit file to confirm certain information, including about your lenders, balances, account numbers, your account, address and insolvency history and details of judgments made against you (e.g. CCJs). Your credit file data will be provided by Callcredit Limited (trading as TransUnion), subject to passing their authentication process. For more information about how TransUnion uses and shares your credit file information, please click here.

Who will the data be shared with?

If you were introduced to our services by a third party, we will share information about what debt solution we have recommended and whether you choose to use our services.

We may share your information with our service partners, i.e. companies who provide services to us that enable us to provide our services to you. This will include IT service providers, communication service providers, printers, professional advisors and insurers, advertisers and social media platforms. We will only share your information with them if they’ve agreed to keep it confidential.

Our regulators , such as the Financial Conduct Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office or any other regulatory body or authority may request certain information as part of supervising us. We have a legal or regulatory obligation to provide this.

If you have provided your authority, if we have a legitimate interest to do so or where we may be legally entitled to, we will share information with credit reference agencies (CRAs) to obtain information about your financial history or your credit commitments.

For further information on how CRAs may use your personal information you can view the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice here or from the three main CRAs – TransUnion (formerly Callcredit); Equifax; and Experian.

How long will your data be stored for?

If you continue to be our customer and we give you advice, 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 data to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. This 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 the Group, your personal information will normally be deleted after 2 years (except for any recorded telephone calls) unless we have another reason to keep your personal information, for example, if you have given your consent to receive marketing or promotional messages from us.

After this time, we will delete the information or anonymise the data so that it cannot be linked back to you.