This privacy notice is to let you know how we promise to look after your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn by having you as a customer and the choices you give us about what marketing you want us to send you. This notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Last updated 17 September 2018
Introduction
Mortgages for Business (MFB) is a commercial and residential mortgage broker, incorporating the Keystone Property Finance lending brand. MFB is part of the Property Business Group and is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and is the Data Controller of the information you provide. You can contact us for general data protection queries by email to compliance@mortgagesforbusiness.co.uk, or in writing to the Data Protection Officer, Mortgages For Business, 17 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, ME19 4UA.
How the law protects you
As well as our Privacy Policy, your privacy is protected by law. This section explains how it works.
Data Protection law says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside Mortgages for Business and its trading division Keystone Property Finance.
The law says we must have one or more of these reasons:
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you.
Your rights
Your personal data is protected by legal rights, which include your rights to:
For more information or to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us using the contact details above.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) https://ico.org.uk/concerns/, which regulates the processing of personal data.
How we may use your personal information
We’ll use your personal information under our fair processing policy to manage our relationship with you or your business, develop new ways to provide service for our customers and to grow our business in an efficient and proper way, develop and carry out marketing activities and to study how our customers use services from us and manage our brands and services.
We’ll also use your personal information to manage how we work with other companies that provide services to us and our customers. This will be to:
When we may use your personal information
We’ll use your personal information for fulfilling contracts and business agreements we have with you and for what we consider to be our legitimate interests or our legal duty. Legitimate reasons when we may use your personal information include maintaining our records and managing our relationship with you, our customer, including advising you of new products or key events in the products you already have through us. For anything else, we will only use your personal information with your consent.
What type of Personal Information we’ll gather
For us to be able to find the right product or service for you, we need to collect personal information about you and any co-directors should the borrowing be through a company. These will include (but are not limited to) your name, occupation, date of birth, contact details and financial details.
Additionally, we may need to collect sensitive personal data for some products or to comply with legislation. We will only collect and use these types of data if we are specifically required to:
We will only collect the information we require to progress your case and only collect and process sensitive personal data where it is essential to finding the product you have requested. We will not explicitly request your consent to process this information as it is required by us to perform the service we have agreed to. If you do not want us to use and where necessary, share this information, we will be unable to help you.
Where we’ll gather your Personal Information from
The majority of your personal data we collect will come directly from you, from information you enter into our website, details of telephone calls, email correspondence and the completion of application forms. We gather data from devices you use to connect to those services, such as computers and mobile phones, using cookies and other internet tracking software. Additionally, when required we may collect personal information about you from external sources such as other brokers/financial advisers, Companies House and credit reference agencies.
Who we’ll share your personal information with
We will share your personal information with third parties such as lenders and other brokers, to arrange the supply of services and products we have recommended. We may also share your personal information with other organisations when required, such as:
In addition to the above, should we undergo a major company restructuring, then your data will be used by the new organisation in the same way as set out in this notice.
Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs)
We will carry out credit and identity checks when you apply for our services, whether as an individual or through a business. We may use Credit Reference Agencies to help us with this. Where we do, we will share your personal information with the CRAs and they will give us information about you. The data we exchange can include (but is not limited to:
We’ll use this data to:
When we ask CRAs about you or your business, they will note it on your credit file. This is called a credit search. Other lenders may see this and we may see credit searches from other lenders.
If you apply for a product with someone else, we will link your records with theirs. We will do the same if you tell us you have a spouse, partner or civil partner – or that you are in business with other partners or directors. You should tell them about this before you apply for a product or service. It is important that they know your records will be linked together and that credit searches may be made on them.
CRAs will also link your records together. These links will stay on your files unless one of you asks the CRAs to break the link. You will normally need to give proof that you no longer have a financial link with each other.
You can find out more about the CRAs on their websites, in the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice. This includes details about:
Here are links to the information notice for each of the three main Credit Reference Agencies:
Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs)
Before we provide products, services or financing to you, we undertake checks for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, including verifying your identity. To do this, we may share your personal information with FPAs.
When we and fraud prevention agencies process your personal data, we do so on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, in order to protect our business and to comply with laws. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of the services and financing you have requested. When appropriate, we and fraud prevention agencies, may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.
Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years. A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the details above.
Data transfers
Should a fraud prevention agency transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), they will impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing.
How we’ll keep your personal information secure
We have strict procedures for how and where we store and share your personal data, that comply with industry practices, for both electronic and paper formats. We store all the information you give us and will use new information to update existing records we hold for you. Where paper records are stored off site, they are done so with a storage company that adheres to the principles of GDPR.
Sending data outside of the EEA
We will only send your data outside of the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) to comply with a legal duty. We do not transfer information to agents or advisers outside of the EEA, but if we should need to, we will ensure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:
Marketing
We can only use your personal information to send you marketing messages if we have either your consent or a ‘legitimate interest’. A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information in a way that is fair and potentially beneficial to you.
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time. If you change your mind you can update your choices at any time by contacting us.
How long we keep your personal information
We will keep your personal information whilst you are a customer of Mortgages for Business or its trading division Keystone Property Finance. As a minimum, this will be for the period that you hold a mortgage that was sold by us. After you stop being a customer, we may keep your data for up to seven years so that we can:
We may keep your data for longer than seven years if we cannot delete it for legal, regulatory or technical reasons. We may also keep it for research or statistical purposes. If we do, we will make sure that your privacy is protected and the data only used for those purposes.
How to get a copy of your personal information
You can access your personal information we hold by emailing us at compliance@mortgagesforbusiness.co.uk. Alternatively, you can write to us at our registered address:
Mortgages for Business, 17 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, ME19 4UA
Letting us know if your personal information is incorrect
You have the right to review any information we have about you and to ask us to correct anything that you think is wrong or incomplete. Please contact us as above if you want to do this. We will take reasonable steps to check its accuracy and correct it if it was wrong at the time of processing and to update your contact details if appropriate.
What if you want us to stop using your personal information?
You have the right to object to our use of your personal information or to ask us to delete it if there is no need for us to keep it. This is known as the ‘right to object’ and ‘right to erasure’, or the ‘right to be forgotten’.
Please contact us as above if you wish us to delete your personal information. There may be legal or other official reasons why we are not able to, but we may be able to restrict its use. This means that it can only be used for certain things, such as legal claims or to exercise legal rights. We would not use or share your information in other ways whilst it is restricted.
You can ask us to restrict the use of your personal information if:
How to withdraw your consent
You can withdraw your consent for us to use your personal data at any time. Please contact us if you want to do so. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. If this is so, we will tell you.
How to complain
Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information. You can contact us by phone on 0345 345 6788, via email to compliance@mortgagesforbusiness.co.uk, or write to us directly to our address Mortgages for Business, 17 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, ME19 4UA
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern.
Data portability
You have the right to get your personal information from us in a format that can be re-used easily. You can also ask us to pass on your personal information to other organisations.
We are working with our industry to improve the way your data is shared. We’ll update this notice if required with more details.