Privacy Policy

Your personal data means any information that describes or relates to your personal circumstances. It may identify you directly, for example your name, address, date or birth, National Insurance number.

Your personal data may also identify you indirectly, for example, your employment situation, your physical and mental health history, or any other information that could be associated with your cultural or social identity.

In the context of providing you with assistance in relation to your investment, mortgage or insurance requirements your personal data may include:

• Title, names, date of birth, gender, nationality, civil/marital status, contact details, addresses and documents that are necessary to verify your identity.

• Employment and remuneration information, (including salary/bonus schemes/overtime/sick pay/other benefits) and employment history.

• Bank account details, tax information, loans and credit commitments, personal credit history, sources of income and expenditure, family circumstances and details of dependents.

• Health status and history, details of treatment and prognosis, medical reports (further details are provided below specifically with regard to the processing we may undertake in relation to this type of information)

• Any pre-existing investment, mortgage or insurance products and the terms and conditions relating to these.

Where you ask us to assist you with, for example, your insurance or investments, in particular life insurance and insurance that may assist you in the event of an accident or illness, we will ask you for information about your ethnic origin, your health and medical history - your special data. We will record and use your special data in order to make enquiries of providers in relation to insurance products that may meet your needs and to provide you with advice or guidance regarding the suitability of any product that may be available to you.  

If you have parental responsibility for children under the age of 13, it is also very likely that we will record information on our systems that relates to those children and potentially, to their special data.

The arrangement of certain types of insurance may involve disclosure by you to us of information relating to historic or current criminal convictions or offences which is known as criminal disclosure. This is relevant to insurance related activities such as underwriting, claims and fraud management.

We will use special data and any criminal disclosures in the same way as your personal data generally, as set out in this Privacy Notice.              

Information on special data and criminal disclosures must be capable of being exchanged freely between insurance intermediaries such as our firm, and insurance providers, to enable customers to secure the important insurance protection that their needs require.

We will collect and record your personal data from a variety of sources, but mainly directly from you. You will usually provide information during our initial meetings or conversations with you to establish your circumstances and needs and preferences in relation to investment and insurance. You will provide information to us verbally and in writing, including email.

We may also obtain some information from third parties, for example, credit reference agencies, and searches of information in the public domain such as the voters roll, bank/building society records, financial services records and other publicly available sources.

If we use technology solutions to assist in the collection of your personal data, for example, software that is able to verify your identity, residential status and determine whether you are listed on financial sanctions or politically exposed person registers.

We will only do this if we have consent from you for us or our nominated processor to access your information in this manner. With regards to electronic ID checks we would not require your consent but will inform you of how such software operates and the purpose for which it is used.

In the course of handling your personal data, we will:     

• Record and store your personal data in our paper files, mobile devices and on our computer systems (websites, email, hard drives, and cloud facilities).

• This information can only be accessed by authorised employees and consultants within our firm and only when it is necessary to provide our service to you and to perform any administration tasks associated with or incidental to that service.

• Submit your personal data to product providers, mortgage lenders or insurance product providers, both in paper form and on-line via a secure portal.

• The provision of this information to a third party is essential in allowing us to progress any enquiry or application made on your behalf and to deal with any additional questions or administrative issues that lenders and providers may raise.

• Use your personal data for the purposes of responding to any queries you may have in relation to any investment, mortgage product or insurance policy you may take out, or to inform you of any developments in relation to those products and/or policies of which we might become aware.

From time to time your personal data will be shared with:

Investment providers, mortgage lenders and insurance providers.

Third parties who we believe will be able to assist us with your enquiry or application, or who are able to support your needs as identified.

These third parties will include but may not be limited to, our compliance advisers, product specialists, estate agents, providers of legal services such as estate planners, conveyancing, surveyors and valuers (in each case where we believe this to be required due to your particular circumstances).

In each case, your personal data will only be shared for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice, i.e. to progress your investment, mortgage, finance or insurance enquiry and to provide you with our professional services.

Please note that this sharing of your personal data does not entitle such third parties to send you marketing or promotional messages: it is shared to ensure we can adequately fulfil our responsibilities to you, and as otherwise set out in this Privacy Notice.

We do not envisage that the performance by us of our service will involve your personal data being transferred outside of the European Economic Area.

Your privacy is important to us and we will keep your personal data secure in accordance with our legal responsibilities. We will take reasonable steps to safeguard this data against it being accessed unlawfully or maliciously by a third party.

We also expect you to take reasonable steps to safeguard your own privacy when transferring information to us, such as not sending confidential information over unprotected email, ensuring email attachments are password protected or encrypted and only using secure methods of postage when original documentation is being sent to us.

Your personal data will be retained by us either electronically or in paper format for a minimum of six years, or in instances whereby we have legal right to such information we will retain records indefinitely.

Under the data protection legislation, you have the right to:

• Request copies of your personal data that is under our control.

• Ask us to further explain how we use your personal data.

• Ask us to correct, delete or require us to restrict or stop using your personal data.

• Ask us to send an electronic copy of your personal data to another organisation should you wish .

Change the basis or withdraw any consent you may have provided to enable us to market to you in the future.

If you have any questions or comments about this document, or wish to make contact in order to exercise any of your rights set out within it, please contact:

Compliance, Prism Financial Advice Limited, Prism House, 13 Keel Row, The Watermark, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, NE11 9SZ

Tel: 0191 461 9400 - Email: dataprotection@prismadvice.co.uk

If we feel we have a legal right not to deal with your request, or to action it in different way to how you have requested, we will inform you of this at the time.

You should also make contact with us as soon as possible on you becoming aware of any unauthorised disclosure of your personal data, so that we may investigate and fulfil our own regulatory obligations.

If you have any concerns or complaints as to how we have handled your personal data you may lodge a complaint with the UK's data protection regulator, the ICO, who can be contacted through their website at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ or by writing to Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.