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Brookson Financial Limited of 320 Firecrest Court, Centre Park, Warrington, WA1 1RG is a “data controller” in relation to data we hold and process relating to our employees and contractors.
As a Data Controller, this means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this Privacy Notice.
This notice applies to current and former clients, employees, workers and contractors of the entity listed above. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other Privacy Notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.
We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- Name
- Home address
- Residential address
- Address history
- Contact details including telephone number and email address
- Date and place of birth
- Title
- IP address/location
- Connect login and password details
- Bank details
- Unique tax reference number / National Insurance Number
- Financial details including your income, expenditure, assets, liabilities, loans and credit history
- Mortgage details
- The contact details for your emergency contacts
- Your gender
- Your marital status and family details
- Employment details
- Your identification documents including passport and driving licence
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records from any note or records provided by you or your doctor or medical professional from time to time
- Information about your racial or ethnic origin
- Information about your genetic or biometric data
- Information on your family including details regarding your children
- Any other category of personal data which we may notify you of from time to time
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?
We collect personal information about customers through the initial engagement process, either directly from you over the telephone, in writing by email or post or by notes at a face to face meeting, through submitting information to us via the brooksonfinancial.co.uk website, or often from other companies within the Brookson Group. We may also collect additional information from third parties including credit reference agencies or other background check agencies to confirm your identity and suitability for engaging with us, from your use of our website, or from your end client or agency.
We will also collect additional personal information in the course our engagement relating to the services which we provide.
We will collect this data from the following sources:
- Instant messaging
- Letters
- Online data capture forms
- Telephone calls (these may be recorded)
- Information from received directly from end clients
- Information received from recruitment businesses
All data received and recorded will only be used in accordance with the purposes set out below and where we have a legal basis for processing this data.
IP addresses and cookies
As is the case with most websites, we may obtain information about your usage of our web services through the use of cookies on our website. A cookie is a small piece of data placed on your hard drive in order to assist us in ensuring that your experience of using our website is optimised for your personal circumstances. Cookies cannot pass on computer viruses, retrieve other data from your computer’s hard drive or capture your email address. Cookies can be used to save users time on the site, by securely storing a user’s ID and password, personalising web pages, identifying visited parts of a site and keeping track of user’s selections. We use cookies to estimate our audience size and usage pattern, to speed up your searches and to collect information about your browsing habits and tailor our content, support and advertising in a manner relevant to our users. The data may then be used to track the user’s sites, via third-party vendors such as Google and may show adverts from us or other parts of the Brookson Group on those internet sites.
You have the option to opt-out and manage the cookies by altering the “help” settings on your browser. However, if you choose to disable the cookies, this can impair the functionality of our website and web services being used.
HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- Where we have your explicit consent.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We will not use your personal data for an unrelated purpose without telling you about it and the legal basis that we intend to rely on for processing it.
If you choose not to provide us with certain personal data you should be aware that we may not be able to carry out certain parts of the contract between us.
EXAMPLES OF WHEN WE MIGHT PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We have to process your personal data in various situations during your engagement with us, and in some circumstances beyond termination of your engagement with us.
We may need to process your personal data for the following reasons:
- Providing you with access to financial advice as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Arranging and advising on corporate, personal and family protection as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Analysing and processing eligibility for mortgage services, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Analysing and processing eligibility for pension services, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Analysing and processing eligibility for retirement plan services, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Analysing and processing eligibility for savings plan services, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Analysing and processing eligibility for investment plan services, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- Arranging and advising on general insurance in accordance with our terms of engagement with you;
- Assessing your protection needs and reviewing any existing plans in order to make recommendations and advise of suitable products to assess any shortfall in your needs as per the terms of our engagement with you;
- We might process special categories of your personal data for the purpose of providing our service to you, as per our terms of engagement with you;
- We may need to process your data in order to carry out anti-money laundering checks in order to prevent fraud. This is in line with our legal obligations;
- Where processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, in our legitimate interest.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as advising you or providing a benefit), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to monitor the health and safety of our employees or workers).
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION
"Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information with your explicit consent
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We may also process such information about clients or former clients in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.
Do we need your consent?
Usually, we will approach you for your explicit consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. We will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent.
OUR OBLIGATIONS AS A SERVICE PROVIDER
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
- We will use information relating to leaves of absence, which may include sickness absence or health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your suitability and fitness to work, to provide appropriate workplace adjustments, to monitor and manage sickness absence and to administer benefits.
- We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
- We will use trade union membership information to pay trade union premiums, register the status of a protected employee and to comply with employment law obligations.
AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING
Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:
- Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration.
- Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
- In limited circumstances, with your explicit consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.
We may use some automated decision-making in order for us to understand the information required from you in order for us to comply with our anti-money laundering obligations as we will use online search tools to assist us in the performance of Know Your Client and Identity Checking activities from time to time.
DATA SHARING
We will have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the Brookson Group.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We may transfer your personal information outside the EU.
If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
“Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) and other entities within our Group. The following third-party service providers process personal information about you for the following purposes:
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the Group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
How secure is your information with third-party service providers and other entities in our Group?
When might we share your personal information with other entities in the Group?
We will share your personal information with other entities in our Group as part of our regular operations and reporting activities on company performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or Group restructuring exercise, for system maintenance support and hosting of data and for back office support and legal support.
What about other third parties?
We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the Brookson Group or regulatory compliance activities.
DATA SECURITY
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from our Group Data Protection Officer (dpo@brookson.co.uk).
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
DATA RETENTION
How long will we use your information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our data retention policy which is available from our Group Data Protection Officer (dpo@brookson.co.uk). To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.
RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your engagement with us.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information to ensure it remains accurate and up to date.
- Request erasure of some or all of your information which we hold on you, subject to us complying with our legal and regulatory obligations which may override your right to request erasure.
- Request that we cease processing some or all of your information, in whole or in part, subject to our legal and regulatory obligations which may override your right to request that we either pause our processing activities or cease processing your personal data entirely.
- Request that your data is transferred to a third party (portability) in the event that you look to use the services of a third party (such as if you chose to use another financial adviser), we will share data relating to your engagement with us with such third party (for example, your new financial adviser), upon request.
- Object to some or all of your data no longer being processed by us (either temporarily or permanently). This will be subject to our legal and regulatory obligations which may override your right to request this, but we will ensure that such obligations and or/legitimate interest of ours (or others) are sufficiently compelling in order to override you rights in this regard.
- If we use automated-decision making or profiling you will be able to request manual/human intervention to ensure appropriate decisions are taken or advice provided.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please respond to the point of contact from whom you received the last communication to which you consented to receive, or our Business Advisory Team (customerservices@brookson.co.uk). Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, insofar that we do not have a legal obligation to do so. Please also note that in certain circumstances withdrawing consent may restrict us from performing our contractual obligations.
DATA PROTECTION OFFICER
We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO by email at dpo@brookson.co.uk. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact the Data Protection Officer (dpo@brookson.co.uk)
INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS
We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.
Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.
We may also process such information about employees or former employees in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment or employment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in the following way:
- To assess your suitability and fitness to work for us;
- To ensure compliance with legal obligations contained in the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulation 2003 (as amended from time to time) and to support a recruitment business’ compliance obligations in relation to the same.
We are allowed to use your personal information in this way to carry out our obligations during our employment relationship and in compliance with legal obligations imposed on the supply chain relating to atypical/temporary workers and contractors.
HOW SHOULD YOU PROCESS PERSONAL DATA FOR THE COMPANY?
Everyone who works for, or on behalf of, the Company has some responsibility for ensuring data is collected, stored and handled appropriately, in line with this policy and the Company’s Data Security and Data Retention policies.
The Company’s Data Protection Officer is responsible for reviewing this policy and updating the Board of Directors on the Company’s data protection responsibilities and any risks in relation to the processing of data. You should direct any questions in relation to this policy or data protection to this person.
You should only access personal data covered by this policy if you need it for the work you do for, or on behalf of the Company and only if you are authorised to do so. You should only use the data for the specified lawful purpose for which it was obtained.
You should not share personal data informally.
You should keep personal data secure and not share it with unauthorised people.
You should regularly review and update personal data which you have to deal with for work. This includes telling us if your own contact details change.
You should not make unnecessary copies of personal data and should keep and dispose of any copies securely.
You should use strong passwords.
You should lock your computer screens when not at your desk.
Personal data should be encrypted before being transferred electronically to authorised external contacts. Speak to IT for more information on how to do this.
Consider anonymising data or using separate keys/codes so that the data subject cannot be identified.
Do not save personal data to your own personal computers or other devices.
Personal data should never be transferred outside the European Economic Area except in compliance with the law and authorisation of the Data Protection Officer.
You should lock drawers and filing cabinets. Do not leave paper with personal data lying about.
You should not take personal data away from Company’s premises without authorisation from your line manager or Data Protection Officer.
Personal data should be shredded and disposed of securely when you have finished with it.
You should ask for help from our Data Protection Officer if you are unsure about data protection or if you notice any areas of data protection or security we can improve upon.
Any deliberate or negligent breach of this policy by you may result in disciplinary action being taken against you in accordance with our disciplinary procedure.
It is a criminal offence to conceal or destroy personal data which is part of a subject access request (see below). This conduct would also amount to gross misconduct under our disciplinary procedure, which could result in your dismissal.
You are also referred to the Information Security section of the Staff Handbook for additional obligations in addition to those this policy.
HOW TO DEAL WITH DATA BREACHES
We have robust measures in place to minimise and prevent data breaches from taking place. Should a breach of personal data occur (whether in respect of you or someone else) then we must take notes and keep evidence of that breach. If the breach is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals then we must also notify the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours.
If you are aware of a data breach you must contact the Data Protection Officer (dpo@brookson.co.uk) immediately and keep any evidence you have in relation to the breach.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact the Data Protection Officer (dpo@brookson.co.uk)