PLANET FINANCE
Bespoke Mortgages and Finance
Privacy Policy
Introduction
As a data controller, Planet Finance (“Planet Finance/we/us/our”) comply with all applicable data protection and privacy legislation in force from time to time including the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (where applicable) (together the “GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018. (“DPA18”). This privacy notice details how we process your personal data.
Under the UK GDPR we are required to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) about our use of personal data. You can view our current controller registration on the ICO here:
https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/ZB232588
We place great importance on ensuring the quality, confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data we hold and in meeting our data protection obligations when processing personal data. Planet Finance is committed to protecting the security of your personal data. We use a variety of technical and organisational measures to help protect your personal data from unauthorised access, use or disclosure.
We collect personal data about a range of people:
• Visitors to our websites
• People who contact us (enquirers)
• Clients (including clients of the businesses operating under us)
• Contractors and suppliers
If you are applying, or have applied to work with us, please refer to our job applicant privacy notice.
What personal information we process
We process personal information to act as an intermediary for financial transactions; typically to advise and apply for property finance such as mortgages or similar for clients. The same applies to advising and arranging insurance policies.
To understand how any personal information other than that provided to us through this website is processed you will need to refer to any personal communications you receive from us, check any privacy documents provided when entering into a contract with us, or contact us to ask about your personal circumstances.
Enquirers
When you contact us, we ask for some personal information. You are under no obligation to provide this information to us. Providing that information, enables us to give you the right information or services that you ask for, or notify you of further information required to facilitate that service.
If we would like to use your information for any other purpose than those stated above, we will contact you.
As a minimum, we will hold your name and phone number for the purposes specified above. If you do not become a client of ours, your information will be erased in line with our retention policy.
Visitors to Our Website
We use Google Analytics on our website (https://www.planet-finance.co.uk) to provide statistics to help us give visitors the best experience when using our sites. IP addresses are collected to see how users interact with our site. Our website uses cookies, which is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns.
We use cookies to help identify and track visitors and their website access preferences. Website visitors can control which types of cookies are placed on their browser by adjusting the cookie settings in the cookie controller button, which can be found at the bottom left-hand corner of our website.
Our Clients Views
We want to receive your views on the service you received from us and any improvements you think are necessary. We use Trustpilot® as a data processor to collect feedback from our customers on our behalf and to support our marketing activities. If this is something you agree to help us with, we will share your name and email address with Trustpilot® in order to generate a review invite and confirm you are a verified customer of Planet Finance.
Regulatory Functions and Reporting
As a regulated firm we required to retain and provide information to the FCA regularly. We must also collect and store regulatory data from our authorised firms, called Appointed Representatives. Most of the information is provided to us under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
PURPOSES & BASES FOR USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following purposes and lawful bases:
Purpose
Carrying out due diligence on our clients and performing risk assessments. This includes carrying out standard due diligence checks in relation to financial affordability checks for the mortgage and insurance products we recommend to you.
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Legal and regulatory compliance and compliance with law enforcement requests. This includes biometric facial recognition to confirm your identity, other checks and monitoring transactions for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime and to comply with laws relating to money laundering, and fraud. Also, sharing information on suspected financial crimes, fraud and threats with law enforcement and regulatory bodies.
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Providing our mortgage and insurance advisory and administration services to you, covering any services we provide to you as a private client.
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Managing and developing our relationship with you. This includes providing account management, contacting you for feedback and inviting you to participate in customer satisfaction surveys.
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Lawful Basis for Processing
Necessary to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject. Our legitimate business interest to assess the risk associated with providing you with our services. When processing sensitive personal data, we do so with your explicit consent.
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Necessary to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject.
When processing sensitive personal data, we do so with your explicit consent.
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Necessary for the performance of the contract agreement to which you are a party.
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Our legitimate business interest to develop our relationship, collect your feedback, assess your level of client satisfaction and to improve our services.
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Maintaining a record of and monitoring clients that consider themselves to be or are considered to be vulnerable.
Necessary to comply with FCA guidance on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers. When processing sensitive personal data, we do so with your explicit consent which can be withdrawn at any time.
Sending you marketing about our services, our news and events. This includes sending you our news emails, information about our services, related information which may be of interest to you and to invite you to our events.
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Internal management, administrative and organisational purposes. This includes maintaining internal records and carrying out other business administration tasks.
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Statistics and other data analysis. This includes creating forecasts and business plans, improving our services and developing new services.
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Sharing data with entities in our group. This includes sharing client records and results of due diligence with our Appointed Representatives entities.
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Sharing data with other third parties, including third parties who process personal data on our behalf.
Our legitimate business interest to send you marketing and promotional materials from time to time. Where we have obtained your consent to send marketing rely on consent as the legal basis. You can tell us to stop sending you marketing information at any time by objecting or withdrawing your consent. You can do so by contacting us at info@planet-finance.co.uk or by using the unsubscribe link in any marketing email you receive from us.
Our legitimate business interest to process your personal data to manage and improve our business processes.
Our legitimate business interest to process your personal data to develop and improve our business through aggregated and anonymised reporting and analysis.
Our legitimate business interest to identify and develop shared clients across our network of advisers and to utilise existing due diligence and risk assessment information when providing our clients with services.
Our legitimate business interest to share your data with trusted third parties who provide us with services relevant to our provision of services to you, including professional advisers, screening service providers and IT service providers.
Sharing your information
We sometimes need to share the personal information with other organisations. Where this is necessary, we are required to comply with all aspects of the UK GDPR.
What follows is a description of the types of organisations we may need to share some of the personal information we process with for one or more reasons. Where a joint application is made, we are not able to restrict data sharing between applicants.
Planet Finance will only collect the information needed so that it can provide you with marketing and consulting services. We do not sell or broker your personal data.
Where Necessary or Legally Required We Share Information With:
• Associates and representatives of the person whose personal data we are processing, including but not limited to; estate agents (if you were introduced to us by one of our agent partners), solicitors, accountants and other professionals.
• Financial organisations
• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
• The Financial Ombudsmen Service (FOS)
• Law enforcement and prosecuting authorities
• Credit reference agencies
• Debt collection and tracing agencies
• Other companies in the same group
• Our service providers
• Courts and tribunals
• Undertaking research
• Consulting and advisory services
• Our professional advisers
• HMRC
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​We may, on occasion, pass your personal information to third parties exclusively to process work on our behalf; for example, a data destruction provider. We always require these parties to agree to process this information based on our instructions and requirements consistent with this Privacy Notice and UK GDPR.
How we protect your data
Planet Finance takes the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused, or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties. Where we engage third parties to process personal data on our behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of the data.
How long we retain personal data
To ensure we meet our legal, regulatory and customer obligations, we will retain client information for the following periods.
• An introductory enquiry from a person who we only have limited interaction with is retained for 90 days.
• Any survey information gathered from enquirers or clients is retained for 18 months.
• Any mortgage enquiry, mortgage application and mortgage completion is retained in perpetuity.
• Any life or critical illness insurance product enquiry, insurance product application and insurance policy completion is retained in perpetuity.
International transfers
It is unlikely that we’ll ever share your personal data outside the European Union or European Economic Area. If, however, it becomes necessary for the purposes of providing our services to you, we will only share it with organisations in countries benefiting from a European Commission adequacy decision or on the basis of Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission which contractually oblige the recipient to process and protect your personal data to the standard expected within the EU/EEA.
Your rights
At any point whilst Planet Finance is in possession of or processing your personal data, all data subjects have the following rights:
• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you
• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply you have a right to restrict the processing
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right not to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling
In the event we refuse your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why, which you have the right to legally challenge.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
You have the right to access your personal information (subject to certain exemptions). If you wish to find out what information we hold that relates to you, please contact, details below.
Automated decision making
We do not make client or supplier decisions based solely on automated decision making.
Contact us
This privacy notice does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of the collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. If you have any questions or complaints regarding your data, please contact us at;
The Data Protection Manager,
18 Mold Road
Mold
Flintshire
CH7 6TD
Telephone 0333 188 2020 or email info@planet-finance.co.uk
What if I am still not satisfied?
If you are not satisfied with how Planet Finance has responded to your enquiry, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who is the regulator for data protection in the United Kingdom. If you are not satisfied with how Planet Finance has responded to your enquiry, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/, who is the regulator for data protection in the United Kingdom.
Changes to this privacy notice
We update this notice from time to time in response to changes in applicable laws and regulations, to our processing practices and to the products and services we offer. When changes are made, we will update our notice on https://www.planet-finance.co.uk/privacy-policy. Please review this notice periodically to check for updates.
How we approach your complaint
Each of our customers is important to us and we believe you have the right to a fair and courteous service. If you’re dissatisfied with our service, or the advice you receive, we will initially attempt to resolve the matter informally, if you are happy for us to. If we can resolve the matter within 3 business days following the day we received it, we’ll send you confirmation of this. We’ll also let you know about the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) at this time.
If we’re unable to resolve the matter quickly, to your satisfaction, or you would prefer a formal process, then we have a detailed complaint handling process to ensure we are able to investigate and respond to your complaint thoroughly and fairly. This is process is summarised further below.
Planet Finance is regulated by the FCA, so you are entitled to register a complaint at any time. We never impose barriers to you doing so and you can speak directly to our directors or compliance manager.
Should you wish to register a complaint, you may do so by contacting our Principal firm, Planet Finance Limited, in the following ways:
In writing: Compliance Dept. Planet Finance, 18 Mold Road, Mold, Flintshire, CH7 6TD
By phone: 0333 188 2020
By email: info@planet-finance.co.uk.
There are some complaints we cannot consider but we will explain to you if this is case.
Receiving your complaint
If we cannot resolve your complaint informally, within 3 business days following the day we received it, then we’ll write to you to let you know. If you gave your complaint verbally, then we’ll also confirm our understanding of your concerns and request you to correct any misunderstandings.
Investigating
We’ll review our records and discuss your concerns with all those involved. Sometimes we have to liaise with third parties like lenders or solicitors which can require more time and we may need your authority to do so. We’ll also keep you updated throughout.
Responding to your concerns
We’ll provide you with a full written response within eight weeks. If we do not agree then we’ll explain why, but if we recognise we’ve failed you then we’ll explain how we plan to improve. We’ll also confirm whether you can refer to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Should you have cause to complain, and you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you may be able to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service which can be contacted as follows:
If you feel we do not handle your complaint fairly, then you may be able to refer to an independent adjudicator, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) if the matter is concerning residential mortgages, Consumer Buy-to-Let and personal protection policies as these are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The same is not normally true for other Buy-to-Let or commercial mortgages but we’ll let you know if this is the case.
You can contact the Financial Ombudsman Service in the following way;
Visit the website and fill out the online form www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk
Write to Exchange Tower, Harbour Exchange, London E14 9SR
Email: complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk
We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who have set out specific rules for the handling of complaints. Our procedure is compliant with the FCA rules but if you wish to obtain further information please visit http://www.fca.org.uk or email consumer.queries@fca.org.uk