Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION 

1. Purpose of this Privacy Notice  

This privacy notice (“Notice“) sets out important information as to how Flex ABL Limited (collectively referred to as “Flex” “we“, “us” or “our” in this Notice) processes any personal data that we collect from you, or that you provide to us. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.  

2. Data Controller 

For the purposes of the retained UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, as amended, (together the “UK GDPR”), the data controller is Flex ABL Limited. The address of our registered office is: c/o Cox Costello & Horne, 26 Main Avenue, Moor Park HA6 2HJ. 

3. Data Protection Officer – Contact Details 

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Notice are welcomed and should be addressed to our Data Protection Officer at: dpo@flexabl.co.uk or DPO, Flex ABL Ltd, 28-29 Lakeview House, Wilton Drive, Tournament Fields, Warwick CV34 6RG. 

4. Changes to this Notice 

Any changes we make to this Notice in the future will be made available via our website and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please visit our website frequently to see any updates or changes to this Notice.  

It is important that the information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.  

5. Third Party Links 

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.  

WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT AND WHY AND WHAT IS OUR LAWFUL BASIS FOR DOING SO? 

1. CURRENT AND/OR PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS AND THEIR EMPLOYEES, OFFICERS OR SHAREHOLDERS (OR OTHER INDIVIDUALS ASSOCIATED WITH THEM, INCLUDING INTRODUCERS) 

1. The Types of Personal Data we Process  

1. Contact details, including your name, address, e-mail address and phone number  

2. Identification details, including your date of birth and a specimen signature and a copy of your passport, ID card or any other identity document  

3. Your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences  

4. Financial information, where relevant to understanding your income and wealth 

5. Public data, including personal information available from Public Sources (as defined below) 

2. Where we Collect Personal Data From 

We may collect your personal data from:  

1. you directly (for example, when you contact us by phone or email and from documents that you provide to us, such as utility bills or bank statements for address verification purposes and asset and liability statements) 

2. a company that employs you (where you are affiliated to a potential or existing corporate customer);  

3. credit reference agencies;  

4. fraud prevention agencies; 

5. Public Sources, meaning: (i) your company website; (ii) Companies House; (iii) HMLR; (iv) information sources made public by you, including your social media account or any blogs or websites you publish; (v) reputable news publications and reports; (vi) sanctions and watch lists, including anti-terrorism watchlists, anti-money laundering watchlists and CIA and INTERPOL wanted/watchlists; and (vii) law enforcement, court, regulatory or other government websites including disqualified director lists and insolvency registers; and  

6. regulatory compliance service platforms 

3. We use information held about you in the following ways: 

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. We will use your personal data 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 including to:  

1. review suitability for the products and services requested; 

2. review eligibility based on checks providing information covering credit reference and scoring, criminal proceedings/convictions, anti-money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud prevention and financial assessment and affordability; 

3. onboard customers;  

4. manage our relationships with our customers and to communicate with you in relation to the service we provide you; 

5. notify you of service changes and other company announcements (such as office closures and technical issues); 

6. collect debts;  

7. to carry out administrative and operational activities including to collect debts and manage your accounts; 

8. develop and improve our services to you and other customers; 

9. better understand the way you use and manage accounts; 

10. to exercise or defend legal claims; 

11. statistical analysis about credit, insurance and fraud; and  

12. marketing (please see below for further information).   

Alternatively, we will use your personal date in order to enable us to comply with a legal obligation, including to: 

1. verify your identity and carry out relevant anti-money laundering and sanctions checks and fulfilling our obligations under any relevant anti-money laundering laws; and/or  

2. carry out regulatory checks and to meet our obligations to any regulatory authority or comply with any other professional, UK or EU legal and regulatory obligations which apply to us.  

Finally, we will use your personal data where we have your consent to do so, including to search with credit reference and fraud prevention agencies. 

2. WEBSITE USERS 

4. The Types of Personal Data we Process  

1. Technical details in relation to how you use our site including your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, cookie data and IP address.  

2. Information about your visit(s) to our site, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page. 

3. Your interests, preferences, feedback, survey responses, details of products/services you may be interested in. 

5. Where we Collect Personal Data From 

We may collect your personal data from you when you:  

1. use our site, including when you: fill in forms on our site, register to use our site, subscribe to our services, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our site, enter a competition, promotion or survey, and when you report a problem with our site; or  

2. correspond with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise.  

6.  We use information held about you in the following ways: 

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data 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, including to:  

1. ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer and to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service onboard customers;  

2. administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes and as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure; 

3. manage our relationship with you; 

4. provide you with information, products and services that you request from us; 

5. provide you with information about other goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about; 

6. provide you with the ability to complete an application form to request a facility from us;  

7. prepare and publish blog posts on interesting stories and news about our business; and  

8. marketing via our website (including but not limited to surveys and participation events). 

7. Cookies 

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. 

Cookies provide information regarding the computer used by a visitor. We may use cookies where appropriate to gather information about your computer in order to assist us in improving our website. 

We may gather information about your general internet use by using the cookie. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer and stored on the computer’s hard drive.  

Such information will not identify you personally; it is statistical data which does not identify any personal details whatsoever. 

Our advertisers may also use cookies, over which we have no control. Such cookies (if used) would be downloaded once you click on advertisements on our website. 

You can adjust the settings on your computer to decline any cookies if you wish. This can be done within the “settings” section of your computer. For more information please read the advice at AboutCookies.org. 

3. MARKETING 

If you are an existing customer, we or Flex group companies my contact you to tell you about products and services that are similar to those products and services that you have purchased from us and where we think that they be of interest to you and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing. If you are a new customer we will contact you by electronic means only if you have consented to this (you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us).  

SHARING YOUR PERSONAL DATA  

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below: 

8. Any member of the Flex group and any company or organization in which Flex owns a controlling interest. 

9. Selected third parties including: 

1. agents, subcontractors, business partners and affiliates (such as funders and collections agents);  

2. service providers including financiers and professional advisers (such as solicitors, accountants, tax advisers, insurances brokers/firms and auditors, online providers of know your customer and anti-money laundering services and IT service providers and CRM platform providers); 

3. regulatory authorities or similar bodies (if we have a duty to do so or if we are required or requested by any governmental or regulatory authority) such as, credit reference agencies and national fraud databases); and 

4. insolvency practitioners. 

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties in the following circumstances: 

1. In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. 

2. If Flex or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets. 

3. If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Flex, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction. 

4. Where you owe us money, we may give details of your accounts and how you manage them to credit reference agencies. If you do not repay in full and on time, we may tell credit reference agencies.  

TRANSFERS OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA 

When transferring your personal data outside the UK, we will only do so using an apporpirate safeguard, which means such transfer will be: 

1. to a country in relation to which the UK has “adequacy regulations”; or  

2. subject to a contract with the recipient which means that they must protect it to the same standard required in the UK; or  

3. another appropriate safeguard permissiable under the UK GDPR.  

DATA RETENTION 

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with information or a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).  

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. Otherwise we will retain your personal data for the following periods:   

1. Where we have or had a contractual relationship with you, for 6 years from the date on which the contract to which you are party is terminated. 

2. Where you have submitted an application that has been declined, for 1 year from the date on which you are informed of our decision to decline the application. 

3. Where you have submitted an application that was approved but has not been progressed to contract, 1 year from the date on which you are informed of our decision to approve the application. 

YOUR RIGHTS 

If you are an individual covered by this Privacy Notice, under certain circumstances you have rights the following rights under the UK GDPR in relation to your personal data:  

1. ACCESS: You have the right to request access to the personal data we hold about you. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal date we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully.  

2. RECTIFICATION: You have the right to request correction of the personal data we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of any new data you provide to us.  

3. ERASURE: You have the right to request we erase your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. 

4. RESTRICTION OF PROCESSING: In certain circumstances you can request that we suspend the processing of your personal data.  

5. OBJECT: You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data in certain circumstances.  Specifically, where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms. 

6. PORTABILITY: In certain circumstances, you can request the transfer of your personal data to you or a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly uses, machine-readable format.  

Where we are relying on consent to process your personal data you have the right to withdraw your consent. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.  

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.  

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at the details in section 1(c) above. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated. 

HOW TO COMPLAIN 

Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we use your personal data. You can contact us at the details are the top of this form. You have the right to complain to the regulator and to lodge an appeal if you are not happy with the outcome of a complaint. In the UK, the regulator is the Information Commissioner’s Office. Details of how to make a complaint can be found on their website.  

Dated:      March 2021