DATA PROTECTION: USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

At Cheque Centres Group Limited, we are committed to preserving the privacy of our customers. Please read the following policy to understand how we (along with credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies) use and protect the information which you provide to us and we obtain about you.

Who are we?

We are Cheque Centre Limited trading as Cheque Centre, a Scottish limited company registration number SC167596. Our registered office and contact details are set out at the end of this policy.

Our website is operated and maintained by us, and we are responsible for the processing of your data. We are also the data controllers of your personal data. We have notified the Office of the Information Commissioner of our data processing activities and our registration number is Z6956533.

We regard your privacy as very important and any personal information and data which you provide to us will be dealt with in accordance with this Privacy Policy in conjunction with the Terms and Conditions of use of the chequecentre.co.uk website.

What personal information do we collect?

We may collect and retain the following personal information about you:-

• Name and address;
• Phone/fax number(s);
• Email address;
• Bank details and debit card details;
• Name and address of employer, the amount of pay or salary and the frequency of its payment;
• A record of transactions and correspondence between you and us; and
• Copies of identity documents such as passport, drivers’ licence, bank statements or pay slips.

How and why do we use this information

This information will be recorded electronically and will be used:

• to allow us to consider your application for a loan or other product or service;
• to verify your identity in order to prevent and detect crime and money laundering;
• to help us provide you with our products or services;
• if you have borrowed from us and do not make payments that you owe us, to trace your whereabouts and collect debts due to us by you;
• to carry out our obligations and exercise our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us;
• for internal review and business planning purposes to improve our products and our service to customers
• to let you know about important changes in the products and services we offer;
• for marketing purposes (our own and those of third parties);
• By us and credit reference agencies for statistical analysis about credit.

Who do we share this information with?

We may share this information with other companies in the Cheque Centres group of
companies.

We may disclose your information when we are legally required to do so, at the request of police, law enforcement or other Government authorities conducting an investigation, to verify or enforce compliance with laws affecting our business, to protect against misuse or unauthorised use of our proprietary information or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our group of companies, our employees, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, debt recovery and credit risk reduction.

We reserve the right to obtain information from credit reference agencies (which collect and maintain information on peoples’ credit behaviour) regarding your credit behaviour so we are well informed when considering your application for a loan or other product or service. This may include information about your own financial accounts, those of people associated with you, your business, and information held by fraud prevention agencies. The information that you provide to us may be shared with credit reference agencies. Cheque Centres Group Limited reserves the right to utilise one or more of the following credit bureaus to verify and share information with in order to ascertain your credit worthiness:

CallCredit –

Consumer Services Team, PO Box 491, Leeds, LS3 1WZ or call 0870 0601414

Equifax PLC –

Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 3001, Bradford, BD1 5US or call 0870 010 0583 or log on to www.equifax.co.uk

Experian –

Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham NG80 7WF or call 0870 241 6212 or log on to www.experian.co.uk

Teletrack UK Limited –

2 St. John’s Street, Colchester, Essex, CO2 7AA

LendProtect (UK) Limited –

Email: customercare@lendprotect.co.uk or call 0203 106 1208

Please telephone us on 0800 028 6608 if you wish to have details of those CRAs from whom we obtain and to whom we pass information about you. You have a legal right to these details.

If we sell or buy any business or assets (including debt), we may disclose your information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. If our business goes through a corporate merger, consolidation, sale of assets or another corporate change then we may also pass your information to the purchasers or our successors in business to ensure they can continue to operate the business effectively or make full use of the assets sold.

We may also sell, licence or share your information with third parties outside the Cheque Centre Limited of companies for marketing purposes, which means they may send you information about products and services which we or they feel may be of interest to you. Unless you have given consent to being contacted by phone, fax, SMS, MMS, email or other electronic means, your information will not be used by such third parties to contact you using these methods.

Credit reference agencies: linked information

Information held about you by CRAs may already be linked to records relating to your partner(s). For the purposes of this application you and your partner(s) will be treated as being financially independent and you request that your application be assessed without reference to any “associated” records, although you recognise that this may adversely affect the outcome of your application. You confirm that you believe that there is no information relating to your partner(s) that is likely to affect our willingness to offer financial services to you. You authorise us to check the validity of this declaration with CRAs and if we discover any associated records that would affect the accuracy of this declaration we may decide not to proceed with the application on this basis.

Employer

By agreeing to this policy you hereby grant us permission to contact the employer named in your application for the purpose of confirming the information you disclosed to us regarding your employment and salary.

Information we do not share

We do not share your information with companies outside the Cheque Centres group of companies for marketing purposes unless you have given us permission to do so. Equally, we will not contact you with unsolicited commercial communications by phone, fax, SMS, MMS or email unless you have given us permission to do so, or you are an existing customer of ours and the communication is in relation to goods or services similar to those which we have already provided to you.

How long do we keep information?

How long we keep your information may vary, depending on the consent you have given us and the purpose for which the information was collected:

• where you have given us information needed to help us provide you with our products or services, we will keep that information for as long as it takes us to provide those products or services and for a minimum of six years after the last date on which you reduced the debts due by you to us to zero, to allow us to deal with any queries or disputes that arise in that period;
• where you have given us your contact details, we will keep them for as long as we are entitled to send you marketing information; and
• we will keep other information about you if it is necessary for us to do so to comply with our legal obligations.

How we may contact you and your right to opt out

We and anyone else to whom we pass your information may contact you by letter, phone, fax, SMS, MMS or email. You have the right to opt out of mailings by ticking the appropriate box on the loan agreement of which this policy forms part. You may also opt out of receiving mailings from us by writing to us at the address below.

Transfers of information overseas

Chequecentre.co.uk website servers are located in the United States. This means that certain personal data is received in the United States about EU Residents. To properly protect this personal data on EU Residents, we adhere to the US-EU Safe Harbor Privacy Principles with respect to the use and processing of such data in the United States. For more information about the US-EU Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, please refer to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s website at http://www.export.gov/safeharbor, or contact us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy.

By providing us with your personal information on our Website or in the course of using our services, you consent to the transfer of your Personal Data to companies outside the EU, including Cheque Centres Group Limited and its affiliates, and authorised third parties, in accordance with this Privacy Policy

Security

We use appropriate, technical and organisational measures against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data, and against accidental loss of, or damage to, personal data. We also require our service providers to do likewise. Though we periodically review our security policies and implement changes from time to time, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Cookies

During the course of any visit to this website, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer. Most, if not all websites, do this to allow the website publisher to track, for example, whether you have visited the website before. Information that is supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and assist us to analyse the profile of our visitors. You are able to disable cookies using some browsers (for information on how to do this check your browser instructions/help facilities). If you do disable the cookies, we cannot guarantee the performance of our website or service. For more information about cookies and how to manage or disable them, see www.allaboutcookies.org

Note: Our use of cookies is under review following the implementation of new regulations on cookie use within the European Union. Our review is intended to be complete before 26th May 2012.

Hypertext links to international areas of this website and third party websites

This Privacy Policy applies to the UK section of this website only and does not extend to your use of any international areas of this website or any websites operated by us or affiliated companies of ours (which are subject to separate terms and conditions accessible through such areas) or other third party websites (including provision of information by you to such other areas and/or websites) whether accessed by hypertext links contained within this website or otherwise.

Modifications to this policy

We may from time to time use customer information for new and unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in this policy. If our data management practices change at some time in the future we will update this policy. We recommend you check the most recent version of this policy from time to time to keep abreast of our current data management practices. The most recent version of this policy is available on our website, and on request from any of our stores.

Your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998

Among other rights, the Data Protection Act 1998 gives you rights to access the personal data we hold about you, the right to correct any inaccurate or out-of-date information, and the right to ask us not to process your information for marketing purposes. We are entitled to make a charge for giving you access (currently £10) but corrections are free, as are deletions from our marketing list. Please inform us immediately if you become aware that we are holding inaccurate or out-of-date information about you.

How to contact us about data protection

We take our responsibilities as data controllers very seriously, and if you wish to exercise any of your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998, or if you have any queries in general about our approach to data protection and privacy, please contact us at:

Attn:The Data Protection Officer,
Cheque Centre,
The Forum Building,
Bankhead Crossway North,
Edinburgh EH11 4BP.
Tel: 0800 028 6608 (or for international callers +44 (0)131 442 5100)
Email: dataprotection@ukloanstore.co.uk

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