Privacy Policy

Your privacy and the protection of your personal information is important to us. This privacy notice tells you how we look after your personal information and your privacy rights.

Equestrian and Rural Mortgages is the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

What our policy contains

  • What information we collect about you
  • Where we collect personal information from
  • How we use personal information
  • How we use your information for marketing purposes
  • How long we keep your information
  • How we store and transfer your information
  • Who we share your information with
  • Transferring data outside of the EEA
  • Your legal rights
  • Other important points about our website and your information
  • Changes to our privacy policy
  • How to contact us
  • Our company details

1. What information we collect about you

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data. We may process the following types of personal data:

  • Identity information may include your title, first name and last name.
  • Contact information may include your address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial information may include your bank account, your financial position, your financial history and payment card details.
  • Profile information may include marital status, date of birth, details of your current work or profession, income and past work history or skills.
  • Contractual information may include details of the services we provide to you, details of any payments to us and the contracts you enter in to with the third parties we introduce you to.
  • Usage information may include information about how you use and open our website and email newsletters, products and services, your internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and version, time zone and location, operating system and the type of device you use.
  • Marketing and communications information may include your preferences in receiving marketing communications from us and your communication preferences.

2. Where we collect personal information from

We may collect personal information about you and your business from these sources. The data you give to us may include:

  • when you enquire about for our services through our website
  • when you talk to us on the phone
  • when you use our website
  • in emails and letters
  • in face to face meetings
  • at any events we attend.

We may also get data about you from the third parties we work with, which may include:

  • our associates
  • companies that introduce you to us
  • financial advisers
  • social media networks.

This is information that we need to provide the services you have requested from us and to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts between you and us. This may mean sending your details to banks or lenders for the purposes of making lending or mortgage applications that you have consented to. If you do not provide the relevant information, we may be unable to provide the services you have engaged us for.

3. How we use personal information

We are only allowed to use personal information if we have a legal reason to. The most common reasons are:

  • to fulfil a contract we have with you;
  • when it is in our (or those of a third party) legitimate interest; which means we have a genuine business reason to use your information. But this is always balanced against what is reasonable to expect given the nature of our relationship and ensuring it has minimal impact on your privacy;
  • when you give your consent to it;
  • where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We may use your personal information, and which of the legal reasons we rely on to do so, in the following ways.

WHAT WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION FOR TYPE OF INFORMATION OUR LAWFUL GROUNDS FOR PROCESSING
To contact you with your website or phone enquiry or to register you as a new customer Identity
Contact To fulfil your request for information and process any contract we have with you
To deliver the services you request which may include giving your information to third party banks or lenders Identity
Contact
Financial
Profile To fulfil our contract with you
To manage our relationship Identity
Contact
Contractual To fulfil our contract with you
To inform you of any changes to our terms or services Identity
Contact
Marketing & Communications To fulfil our contract with you
To administer and improve our website Usage To monitor and improve our website and services for our and our clients’ benefits under a balanced legitimate interest.
To deliver relevant content and information that will be of value to you in the form of our email newsletters and other marketing no more often than once per month. Identity
Contact
Marketing & Communications
Usage For our existing clients (pre 25/5/18) we use legitimate interest. You may object to this processing at any time. For a copy of our legitimate interest assessment, please contact us.
For our other enquirers, contacts and new clients after 25/5/18 we will use consent.
To comply with any legal or regulatory obligation to which we may be subject Identity
Contact
Financial
Profile
Contractual
Marketing & Communications
Usage To comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

4. How we use your information for marketing purposes

For those clients added to our database before 25 May 2018, who have not previously opted-out of our email newsletters, we are using a carefully balanced legitimate interest assessment to continue to send you our email newsletters and marketing information from time-to-time. For a full copy of our legitimate interest assessment which details why we have chosen this lawful ground, and the safeguards we have put in place, please contact us by email at linda@equineandrural.co.uk. You can object to this grounds processing at any time by emailing us at

linda@equineandrural.co.uk and we will remove you from our list.

We would like to send new contacts and enquirers news about the industry and about our products and services which may be of interest. This may be by post, telephone, email and text message. We will not use your personal information for these purposes, unless you have given explicit consent by checking the appropriate boxes on the forms (website and/or paper copies) we use to collect your personal information.

If you receive our newsletter or other marketing information, you have a right to opt out any time. This can be done through the ‘Unsubscribe’ link that will always be at the bottom of any of our email communications.

5. How long we keep your information

We will not retain your personal information for longer than is necessary to provide our services unless we are required to do so for legal or regulatory requirements.

All data relating to a mortgage application will be kept on our systems for six years in line with our regulatory requirements.

If you consent to marketing, your information we use for marketing purposes will be kept on our systems until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive this information.

6. How we store and transfer your information

All the personal information we collect is processed by our staff in the UK. We are committed to ensuring that your information is kept secure. We maintain strict security standards and procedures to prevent unauthorised access to your data by anyone. We have put in place a variety of physical, electronic and managerial procedures to protect the security of your data. All our staff adhere to our privacy standards and we regularly check them for compliance.

7. Who we share your information with

We may share your information with banks, lenders and other companies, which you have given you consent for us to make a lending or mortgage application on your behalf. These banks, lenders and other companies will process your data for an initial ‘offer in principle’. If you would like to read the full details of how they may use your data, please contact the lender.

When you authorise us to submit an application on your behalf, the lender may share your information with credit bureaux and fraud prevention agencies. They may perform searches which will leave a footprint on your credit file. If you would like to read the full details of how they may use your data, please contact the lender.

We may share your name, address, telephone number and email information with the third-party suppliers who provide us with support services and may process your data on our behalf. We will have written contracts in place with all such entities which require them to process your data only in accordance with our instructions.

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

if R&BS is sold to a third party, in which case personal data held by R&BS about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data to comply with any legal obligation. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We will not share your information for marketing purposes with other companies.

8. Transferring data outside of the EEA

For the purposes of IT hosting, maintenance and marketing this information may be located on servers within the European Union and may be transferred to and stored outside the European Economic Area (EEA). If we do transfer information to agents outside of the EEA we make sure we use one of the following safeguards:

we only transfer your personal data to country with privacy laws that offer the same protection as the EEA;
we use contracts with the recipients to ensure they must give personal data the same protection it has in the EEA;
we transfer data to organisations part of the EU-US Privacy Shield – this requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the US and EEA countries.

9. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have the rights to request:

  • access to your personal data.
  • correction of your personal data.
  • erasure of your personal data.
  • restriction of processing your personal data.
  • transfer of your personal data.
  • your consent is withdrawn.
  • and to object to processing of your personal data.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email us at linda@equineandrural.co.uk

You will not have to pay a fee to exercise any of these rights, but we may charge a reasonable fee for additional copies. We aim to action these requests within one month of the receipt of the request.

10. Other important points about our website and your information

Cookie policy: This website uses cookies. For more details on how we use cookies please see our Cookies and Analytics page.

External links: Our website contains links to and from other third-party websites or social media sites. We cannot be held responsible for the security of these sites and we advise users to read the privacy policies of other websites before registering any personal data.

Enquiry form data: The online enquiry form requires a user to enter personal information to allow us to contact you about the services you request. This information is stored in a secure database. It is not readable by other websites. The transmission of information via the internet is never 100% secure. We will do our best to protect your personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted from our website via our forms. Any transmission is done at your own risk.

11. Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review to make sure that we continue to maintain your privacy and keep your information safe. We reserve the right to update this policy and any changes will be posted on this web page. We may email you directly with any changes if we think it is necessary.

This privacy policy was last updated on 26 May 2018.