Privacy Policy

This policy (together with our general Terms of Use) and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which personal data that you provide to us (if any), will be processed by us.

Please read this policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it because, by visiting www.comparebanks.co.uk (each being our site), you are accepting and consenting to these practices and, if you do not agree to such practices, you must refrain from providing such personal data to us.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you: Information you give us. If you fill in a form on our site or correspond with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise, you are giving us information about you. This includes information you provide when you take any of the following steps, if and when such facilities are offered by our site: register to have a user area, register to add your finance requirements, offers and/ or application details, subscribe to other services which we might make available from time to time, search for a lender or borrower, place an order for services on our site, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our site (if any), enter a competition, promotion or survey that we might feature from time to time, and when you report a problem with our site.

The information you give us may include your (or your employee’s) name, office address, e-mail address and phone number, banking and credit card information, company information, and other details.

Information we collect about you. On each of your visits to our site, we may automatically collect the following information:

technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
information about your visit, 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), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

Information we receive from other sources. If and to the extent that there are other websites we operate or other services that we provide now or in the future, we may also receive information about you if you use any of those other websites we operate or the other services that we provide in relation to which we may collect data about you which, as described below, may be shared internally and combined with other data collected on this site or elsewhere.

We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, and credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

Uses made of this information

We use information held about you in the following ways: Information you give to us. We will use this information:

to carry out our obligations arising from your use of our site (including, where relevant, your requests to find a suitable lender or borrower, any contracts entered into between you and us to provide you with the information and the services of our site or any other contractual obligations agreed between us);
to provide you with information about those services that you are using through our site or other services we offer that are similar to them;
to notify you about changes to our service;
to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
to provide you, or permit selected third parties to provide you, with information about financial opportunities that they feel may interest you and/ or other services. If you do not want us to use your personal data in this way, or to pass your details on to third parties, please let us know by emailing us at [email protected]. Please note, similar such information might be provided to you by us using information you’ve provided other than your personal data (e.g. marketing information might be sent to your company but not to a named individual at your company).

Information we collect about you. We will use this information:

to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
to allow you to participate in the interactive features (if any) of our service when you choose to do so;
as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.

Information we receive from other sources. We may combine this information with information you give to us and the information we collect about you. We may use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

Disclosure of your information

Where relevant, we may share your personal information with any member of our company group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006. We may, from time to time, share your information with selected third parties too including:

Business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with you.
Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others.
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimization of our site.
If and to the extent that we provide goods or services for which you must pay a fee, credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If our site, our company or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its users will be one of the transferred assets.
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 Website Terms of Use or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our company, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you will not be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (the EEA). If, in the future, we plan to make any such transfers of data to a location outside the EEA, we will seek your consent before such data about you is transferred, stored and or otherwise processed outside the EEA by us and we will, in such circumstances and at all times, take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy. By submitting your personal data, you agree to such terms regarding the transfer, storing or processing of your personal data. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers.

Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by following the steps to opt-in/ opt-out of such marketing, as described earlier in this document or by contacting us at [email protected].

Our site 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 those policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Access to information

The Act gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to us at [email protected].

Cookies – Schedule

We use the following cookies: Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website or to make use of e-billing services. Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Functionality cookies. These are used to recognize you when you return to our website.

This enables us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

Cookie	Name	Purpose
_ga, _gat, __utma, __utmb, _utmc, __utmz	Google Analytics	This cookie enables us to estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
PHPSESSID	Session Cookie	Allows you to login and out of our services.

Please note that third parties (for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies through your browser and over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies. You may block our cookies by activating the relevant settings on your browser to refuse all or some of the cookies.

Please note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies), you might not be able to access all or parts of our site. Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after a maximum of 24 months.