Kingston Equity & Finance Ltd (the Company) is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information. For the purpose of applicable data protection law, including the Data Protection Act 1998 and, from its entry into force on 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (together, DP Law), the Company is the data controller. You will see the Company referred to as Victor Finance on the site. Our Privacy Notice explains what we do with any personal information which we collect from you, including when you use our website and when you interact with us in other ways offline, for example during the credit application process. If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Notice, please contact us at the address on our contact us of this site or email us at admin@victorfinance.co.uk

Why should you read this statement?

During the course of dealing with us, we will ask you to provide detailed personal information relating to your existing circumstances, your financial situation and, in some cases, your health and family health history (Your Personal Data). This document is important as it allows us to explain to you what we will need to do with Your Personal Data, and the various rights you have in relation to Your Personal Data.

What do we mean by “Your Personal Data”?

Your Personal Data means any information that describes or relates to your personal circumstances.   Your Personal Data may identify you directly, for example your name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number. Your Personal Data may also identify you indirectly, for example, your employment situation, your physical and mental health history, or any other information that could be associated with your cultural or social identity.

In the context of providing you with assistance in relation to your finance requirements Your Personal Data may include:

  • Title, names, date of birth, gender, nationality, civil/marital status, contact details, addresses and documents that are necessary to verify your identity
  • Employment and remuneration information, (including salary/bonus schemes/overtime/sick pay/other benefits), employment history
  • Bank account details, tax information, loans and credit commitments, personal credit history, sources of income and expenditure, family circumstances and details of dependents
  • Any pre-existing investment/mortgage/finance and/or insurance products and the terms and conditions relating to these

The basis upon which our Firm will deal with Your Personal Data

When we speak with you about your finance requirements we do so on the basis that both parties are entering a contract for the supply of services.

In order to commence that contract, and to arrange the products you require, we have the right to use Your Personal Data for the purposes detailed below.

On occasion, we will use Your Personal data for contractual responsibilities required by our regulator The Financial Conduct Authority, or for wider compliance with any legal or regulatory obligation to which we might be subject.  In such circumstances, we would be processing Your Personal Data in order to meet a legal, compliance or other regulatory obligation which we are bound by.

The basis upon which we will process certain parts of Your Personal Data

The provision or referral to third parties of certain types of finance may involve disclosure by you to us of information relating to historic or current criminal convictions or offences (together “Criminal Disclosures”). This is relevant to finance related activities such as underwriting and fraud management.

We will use special Data and any Criminal Disclosures in the same way as Your Personal Data generally, as set out in this Privacy Notice.

Information on Criminal Disclosures must be capable of being exchanged freely between intermediaries and finance companies such as Kingston Equity and Finance Ltd, to enable customers to secure the finance that their needs require.

How do we collect Your Personal Data?

We will collect and record Your Personal Data from a variety of sources, but mainly directly from you. You will usually provide information during our initial meetings or conversations with you to establish your circumstances and needs and preferences in relation to finance.  You will provide information to us verbally and in writing, including email.

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more CRAs. Where you take services from us we may also make periodic searches at CRAs to manage your account with us. To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your credit application and about your financial situation and financial history. CRAs will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information and fraud prevention information.

We will use this information to:

  • Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product or service;
  • Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us;
  • Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering;
  • Manage your account(s);
  • Trace and recover debts; and
  • Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you take out a product or service and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs.

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.

What happens to Your Personal Data when it is disclosed to us?

Throughout the handling of Your Personal Data, we will:

  • Record and store Your Personal Data in our paper files, mobile devices and on our computer systems (websites, email, hard drives, and cloud facilities). This information can only be accessed by employees & Appointed Representatives within Kingston Equity and Finance Ltd and only when it is necessary to provide our service to you and to perform any administration tasks associated with or incidental to that service.
  • Submit Your Personal Data to Finance Companies, Commercial Lenders, Peer to Peer and algorithmic platforms, Mortgage & Commercial Finance Intermediaries, Accountants & Solicitors, in paper form and on-line via a secure portal. The provision of this information to a third party is essential in allowing us to progress any enquiry or application made on your behalf and to deal with any additional questions or administrative issues that lenders and providers may raise.
  • Use Your Personal Data for our own purposes of processing any loan that you may be taking with us and for the purposes of responding to any queries you may have in relation to any finance product you may take out, or to inform you of any developments in relation to those products of which we might become aware

Sharing Your Personal Data

From time to time Your Personal Data will be shared with:

  • Finance Companies, Commercial Finance and Mortgage Intermediaries, Accountants and Solicitors
  • Third parties who we believe will be able to assist us with your enquiry or application, or who are able to support your needs as identified. These third parties will include but may not be limited to, our Compliance Advisers, providers of legal services such as accountants,
  • In all situations, your Personal Data will only be shared for the purposes set out in this customer privacy notice, i.e. to progress your finance requirement enquiry and to provide you with our professional services.

Please note that this sharing of Your Personal Data does not entitle such third parties to send you marketing or promotional messages: it is shared to ensure we can adequately fulfil our responsibilities to you, and as otherwise set out in this Customer Privacy Notice.

We do not envisage that the performance by us of our service will involve Your Personal Data being transferred outside of the European Economic Area.

Security and retention of Your Personal Data

Your privacy is important to us and we will keep Your Personal Data secure in accordance with our legal responsibilities. We will take reasonable steps to safeguard Your Personal Data against it being accessed unlawfully or maliciously by a third party.

We also expect you to take reasonable steps to safeguard your own privacy when transferring information to us, such as not sending confidential information over unprotected email, ensuring email attachments are password protected or encrypted and only using secure methods of postage when original documentation is being sent to us.

Your Personal Data will be retained by us either electronically or in paper format for a minimum of six years, or in instances whereby we have legal right to such information we will retain records indefinitely.

Your rights in relation to Your Personal Data

You can:

  • request copies of Your Personal Data that is under our control
  • ask us to further explain how we use Your Personal Data
  • ask us to correct, delete or require us to restrict or stop using Your Personal Data (details as to the extent to which we can do this will be provided at the time of any such request)
  • ask us to send an electronic copy of Your Personal Data to another organisation should you wish
  • change the basis of any consent you may have provided to enable us to market to you in the future (including withdrawing any consent in its entirety)

How to make contact with our Firm in relation to the use of Your Personal Data

If you have any questions or comments about this document, or wish to make contact to exercise any of your rights set out within it please contact:

Stuart Williams (Director)
Kingston Equity and Finance Ltd
Concord House
Bessemer Way
Scunthorpe
DN15 8XE

If we feel we have a legal right not to deal with your request, or that we should treat it in different way to how you have requested, we will inform you of this at the time.

You should also contact us as soon as possible if you become aware of any unauthorised disclosure of Your Personal Data, so that we may investigate and fulfil our own regulatory obligations.

If you have any concerns or complaints as to how we have handled Your Personal Data you may lodge a complaint with the UK’s data protection regulator, the ICO, who can be contacted through their website at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ or by writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.