This Privacy Notice co-exists with our Terms and Conditions and together these govern the general practices of this website. We encourage all our users to familiarise
themselves with this statement and our site terms.
General Information
This privacy notice tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information and how we will collect, use and protect your personal data.
This privacy notice co-exists with the following:
- Website Terms and Conditions;
- Credit Agreement (where applicable); and
- Your online Account.
We take our data protection and privacy responsibilities seriously. This notice will explain how we collect, use and share personal information in the course of our business activities, including:
- What information we collect
- Why we need it and how we use your information
- The legal basis for using your personal information
- How we share your information
- If we intend to transfer your data to another country
- How we protect and store personal information
- Your legal rights available to help manage your privacy
- How to contact us for more support and to exercise your rights.
We may amend this notice from time to time to keep it up to date with legal requirements and the way we operate our business. Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email or by your online account.
Types of personal information we may collect
The type of information we may collect or that is passed to us via a third party (with your consent) may vary depending on the product(s) you select. By applying for a loan with us, you are creating an account, and your details will be stored on your account for the duration of our business relationship.
In general, we may collect, use, store and transfer the following types of information:
If you do not provide us with personal data that we need, it may mean we will not be able to process your loan application and facilitate you with a loan.
How we collect your personal data
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
You contacting us
You or someone who is helping you with your finances, may give us your personal data by filling in online forms or by contacting us by post, phone, LiveChat or email. If you are a customer or making an application via our website, you may also provide us with personal data when you upload or update your information in the ‘My Account’ area of our website. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- Apply for a loan with us
- Update information on your account
- Contact us about managing your loan and repayments
- Contact us to make a request, update us or let us know that support is needed
- Tell us about a problem you are having
- Explain the cause of a problem, such as finance difficulty, health issues, life event or others
- Request marketing to be sent to you
- Complete a survey
- Give us feedback, complain or contact us for any other reason.
We will use this information to review and improve the effectiveness of our services. We may also record and monitor incoming and outgoing telephone calls with you. Recordings are used to protect your interests, check for mistakes, combat fraud, help plan and improve our services.
Some of the information we collect is sensitive personal data (also known as special categories of data). In particular, we may process personal data that relates to your health (such as your medical history), and any criminal convictions and offences. If we use sensitive personal data, we will usually do so on the legal basis that it is in the wider public interest (Legitimate Interests & Substantial Public Interest (Economic Well-Being)) , to establish, take or defend any legal action or, in some cases, that we have your consent. In any case, we will keep to all laws that apply.
Third Parties
We also collect information about you from other sources such as:
- Third party lead affiliates/comparison websites: To generate new leads and traffic, we purchase loan applications from carefully selected affiliates and loan comparison websites.
- Credit reference agencies (CRAs): We carry out credit checks, affordability checks and checks to see if loan applicants are politically exposed. For more information, please see Credit Reference Agencies below.
- Fraud prevention agencies (FPAs): We run searches against fraud databases for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity. For more information, please see Fraud Prevention agencies below.
- Open banking: If you have given us consent, we are able to access your financial data to see things like your spending transactions and regular payments, straight from your bank via open banking. More information can be found in the Privacy Policy for consents.online.
-
Truelayer: If you have given us consent, we can take payments through carefully selected third party, Truelayer, who can connect to your bank to make your loan repayment(s) to Mr Lender based on the permissions you’ve given. Please find below links to TrueLayer’s:
- Publicly available sources: This may include via 192 or other publicly available sources.
Automated decision making
The way we analyse personal data relating to our services may involve automated decision making and/or profiling. This means that we may process your personal data using software that can evaluate your personal circumstances and other factors to predict risks or outcomes or to decline your application, without human intervention, based on your credit history and other financial information we have collected about you.
How automated processing makes decisions
We may use profiling, or other automated methods, to make decisions about you that include:
- Credit and affordability assessments: We will consider a number of factors, including information about your income, your outgoings and how well you have kept up on payments in the past. This will be used to work out whether we should decline your application or the amount that we could lend you and you could comfortably afford to pay back.
- Account Review: We may consider activity on your accounts such as whether you are keeping up with payments, paying off debts, extending repayments, or showing signs of financial difficulties. For example, if you request to extend your loan or ask for a top up, this might indicate that you are likely to get into financial difficulties and we may use this information, to offer early support.
- Protecting you and your account against criminal or fraudulent activity: We may assess the details provided to help identify fraudulent activity.
- Protecting us against criminal or fraudulent activity: We may assess a number of factors at the time and other information about your credit history to decide whether you are at risk of fraud or financial-crime (for example, whether offering services to you may break or not be in line with financial sanctions).
You have the right to contact us to ask for a person to review an automated decision.
The legal basis for using your personal data
We will only collect, use and share your personal information where we are satisfied that we have an appropriate legal basis to do this.
- Processing is necessary to perform our contract with you
- Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests
- Processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation
- Processing is based on your consent
- Processing is necessary for the vital interest.
| What we use your information for |
Type of data |
The legal basis (lawful reason) |
To process your loan application, assess your creditworthiness and decide whether to enter into a loan agreement with you. |
- Identity
- Contact
- Employment status
- Proof of income
- Financial Information
- Transaction data
- Identity Documents
- Health Data.
|
Performance of a contract with you |
|
To manage our relationship with you which may include:
- To manage and perform our contract with you
- To update our records
- To deal with your requests, complaints or queries.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Health data
- Criminal conviction data
- Profile Data
- Marketing and Communications.
|
Performance of a contract with you
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and manage our relationship with you).
|
|
To deliver the best service we can to customers, which may include:
- To monitor emails, calls and other communications and activities on your account
- For market research, analysis and developing statistics
- For the prevention, detection, and investigation of financial crime such as fraud and money laundering
- For good governance, accounting, managing and auditing our business operations
- To train employees.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Employment status
- Proof of income
- Financial Information
- Transaction data
- Technology
- Identity
- Documents
- Marketing and Communications Data
- Usages Data
- Profile Data.
|
Legitimate interests
|
|
To identify, manage and/or support vulnerable customers or vulnerable applicants, including to:
- Establish what harm or detriment a customer is vulnerable to
- Listen to any customer views on what support they know or believe would help
- Collect the most relevant information – such as what is causing the vulnerability – to help inform support over time
- Use this information to take action to prevent, minimise, or avoid the harm a customer is vulnerable to
- So a consistent level of support is given across a firm, and customers do not have to repeatedly disclose their situation
- Make sure that a ‘flag’ system and other measures are in place – to alert staff during future contacts, and to allow data from individual disclosures to flow-into aggregate management indicators
- Ensure that any recorded information is periodically reviewed to assess whether it is still accurate, relevant, and necessary for a firm to hold these data
- Monitor trends in vulnerable customer data, and evaluate whether outcomes are as good as non-vulnerable customers
- Use all this insight to encourage more customer vulnerability disclosures.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Employment status
- Proof of income
- Financial Information
- Health Data
- Criminal Convictions and offences
- Transaction data
- Technology
- Identity
- Documents
- Marketing and Communications Data
- Usages Data
- Profile Data.
|
Legitimate interests & Substantial Public Interest (Economic Well-Being)
Consent and Explicit Consent
|
|
If we think a customer or someone they are with is in danger we may process and/or share this information with third parties such as the emergency services or Samaritans on the basis that it is in your vital interests.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Health Data
- Criminal Convictions and offences.
|
Vital interest
|
|
To manage your repayments and debts, including:
- Sending statutory notices and other communications relating to your account including, but not limited to, annual statements, Notice of Sums in Arrears (NOSIA), payment reminders, formal reminders and to support you in becoming debt free or signposting you to others who can help.
- Assessing options to help you if you are in financial difficulty and to check that any repayment plans or other options are sustainable and affordable.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Financial Information
- Transaction Data
- Technology
|
Contract
Legal obligation
|
- For compliance with legal and regulatory requirements and related disclosures
- Legal claims
- Prevention, detection and investigation of crime and anti-money laundering checks
- For good governance, accounting, managing and auditing our business operations
- To monitor emails, calls and other communications and activities on your account
- To verify your identity
- To monitor emails, calls and other communications and activities on your account
- For you to exercise your rights including under data protection laws.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Employment status
- Proof of income
- Financial Information
- Transaction data
- Technology
- Identity Documents
- Marketing and Communications Data
- Usages Data
- Profile Data.
|
Legitimate interest
Legal obligation
|
|
For marketing or communicating our services of those of our third-party partners:
- Sending you marketing communications
- Sending your information to third parties when you ask for it to be shared.
|
- Identity
- Contact
- Employment status
- Proof of income
- Financial Information
- Technology.
|
Consent, you can change your mind at any time and withdraw your consent.
|
Direct marketing
During the application process on our website when your personal data is collected, you will be asked to indicate your preferences for receiving direct marketing communications from us by email and SMS.
We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.
Third-party marketing
We will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes.
Opting out of marketing
You can ask to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by using the contact us form or by following the opt-out links within marketing communication sent to you.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes. For example, relating to payments due or updates to our Terms and Conditions.
Who we will share your information with
We will keep your information confidential and secure. However, we may share it with trusted third parties in the following circumstances.
Credit Reference Agencies
How credit reference agencies share information with us
Credit Reference Agencies hold databases of consumers financial commitments, debts and payments. These will include credit agreements such as mortgages, loans, credit cards or current accounts, and commitments such as telephone agreements, energy and water utilities.
We carry out soft and hard credit checks and also checks to see if loan applicants are politically exposed. To do this, we will supply your personal data to the agency, and they will give us information about you. Credit Reference Agencies may share this information with other organisations, which may use this information to make decisions about you. We may use your credit report to:
- Verify your identity and check that the details you have provided to us are accurate and match the records other financial institutions have about you.
- Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take out and repay a loan with us.
- Identify, prevent and report criminal activity, fraud and money laundering.
- Check the affordability of our products and services and make sure that we are lending responsibly.
- Manage your account that you have with us on an ongoing basis.
- For analysis and research purposes to help improve our products and services. For example, we may monitor an individual’s credit history and combine the information with other details to determine whether the amounts we offer are affordable.
How we share information with credit reference agencies?
If we accept you for a loan with us, we will continue to exchange information about you with the credit reference agency while you have a relationship with us, and in some cases after our relationship ends. We may report the following to any of the credit reference agencies listed below:
- Identity data
- The status of your account
- Details of any missed payments
- Details of us freezing your account
- Details of any payment plans
- If we sell your account
- If you settle your account.
How you can see what information is held about you by credit reference agencies
TransUnion
Website: https://www.transunion.com/
Address: TransUnion, Consumer Services Team, PO Box 491, Leeds, LS3 1WZ
Telephone: 0330 024 7574
Equifax
Website: https://www.equifax.co.uk
Address: Equifax Ltd, Customer Service Centre, PO Box 10036, Leicester, LE3 4FS
Telephone: 0333 321 4043
Experian
Website: https://www.experian.co.uk
Address: Experian, PO BOX 9000, Nottingham, NG80 7WP
Telephone: 0344 481 0800
Credit reference agencies can provide a copy of your credit reference file which we will have used to help make decisions about you. If you’re interested in seeing what information credit reference agencies hold on your credit file, you can do this on their website.
If you believe that the data that credit reference agency holds about you is incorrect, inaccurate or needs to be brought up to date, you can ask them to correct it by using the details above.
This information may be supplied to other organisations such as lenders or gambling operators to carry out “financial risk checks”.
The Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) describes how the three main credit reference agencies in the UK use and share personal data. The CRAIN is available on the credit reference agencies’ websites:
You can ask us for the details of the credit reference agency we have shared your information with.
Your information held by credit reference agencies may be linked to people who are associated with you, such as your partner or other members of your household. These linked records are called associated records. We will not use the associated data that we may receive in a search we make to a credit reference agency.
Fraud Prevention agencies
Cifas is an independent, not-for-profit membership organisation that protects businesses and individuals through effective and secure data and intelligence sharing between the private, public and third sectors. They are registered with the ICO with reference Z5080002 and their company number is 02584687.
Cifas collects information and analyses data and shares the results of this analysis through intelligence reports to member organisations for the purposes of fraud and financial crime prevention as well as other forms of unlawful conduct, malpractice, and seriously improper conduct in relation to employment (collectively known as ‘Risk Conduct’). This service is intended to benefit Cifas members, victims of economic Risk Conduct and the public at large and may require them to process personal data about you. We may share information, including the following, with Cifas as part of our checks for preventing Risk Conduct and to verify identity or if we have concerns about the information we have received:
- Name
- Address
- Date of birth
- Contact details
- Financial information
- Employment details
- Device identifiers including IP address and vehicle details.
Cifas’ Fair Processing Notices for Cifas' Databases describes how they use and share personal data. It is available on Cifas’ website: https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn
Courts, law enforcement/fraud prevention agencies, regulators, government bodies and ombudsman
In some circumstances we are legally obliged to share information. For example, under a court order or if compelled by a statutory body such as the Serious Fraud Office.
We might also share information to meet any legal obligation and/or to prevent or detect crime. This may include with law enforcement agencies (such as the police), fraud prevention agencies, regulatory bodies (such as the Financial Conduct Authority or Information Commissioner’s Office), government bodies or ombudsman services (such as the Financial Ombudsman Service), in order to further their, our or your objectives. In any scenario, we’ll satisfy ourselves that we have a lawful basis on which to share the information and document our decision making and satisfy ourselves we have a legal basis on which to share the information.
Affiliates or other lenders
If Mr Lender cannot offer you a loan, if you consent, we may share your information with an affiliate or another lender who might be able to provide you with a quote for a loan. These affiliates may contact you by post, telephone, email, SMS or other reasonable methods in relation to offers they feel might interest you, products that may suit your needs, to seek your feedback, suggestions or opinions on current products, or for editorial, survey, research and product development purposes. The following list contains the names of third parties with whom we may share such information for purposes of providing you with alternative loan offers or other products that may be suitable for you:
When these affiliates use your personal information to provide a quote for a loan, they will act as controllers of your personal information so you should check their privacy notices that we have linked above. This may involve completing further credit checks and you may receive additional contact. We will only use your information in this way where we have your consent to do so.
Money saving
We also work with carefully selected third parties who might be able to help you with personal finance management, including by offering and supplying savings recommendations, cashback, discounts and vouchers. We currently work with:
Debt Management
Some of our customers ask debt management organisations or other authorised third party representatives, such as insolvency practitioners or carers, to help them with managing their finances or debt. We will work with our customers chosen debt management or authorised third party representative, where we are satisfied that you have appointed them to help you manage your finance or debt (we will ask for a Letter of Authority to evidence this).
Debt Collection Agencies
We may share personal information with debt purchasers who we are considering selling your debt to. We will also share this information if we sell a customers’ debt and, in this situation, the debt collection agency would become the data controller and takes on the legal rights previously held by us.
Service Providers
Other types of organisations that we may share your personal data with include, but are not limited to:
- Communications providers, including email, LiveChat and SMS service providers
- Customer service function providers
- Customer survey partners, who conduct satisfaction surveys on our behalf
- IT service providers
- Legal service providers
- Management consultancies
- Open Banking providers
- Payment service providers
- Professional services firms
- Software providers
- Telephony providers
- Web analytics service providers
- Website hosting service providers
- Third parties after a restructure, sale or acquisition
- Quality Assurance platform provider.
Your data will only be able to be used for the same purposes you originally gave us it for.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
Sharing your information outside of the UK
Your personal information may be transferred and stored in countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA), including the United States of America. Countries out of the EEA are subject to different standards of data protection. We will take appropriate steps to ensure that transfers of personal information:
- Are in accordance with applicable law
- Have appropriate safeguards and protections in place
- Are carefully managed to protect your privacy rights and interests and
- That transfers are limited to countries which are recognized as providing an adequate level of legal protection or where we can be satisfied that alternative arrangements are in place to protect your privacy rights.
Where we transfer your personal information outside Mr Lender or to third parties who help provide our products and services, we obtain contractual commitments from them to protect your personal information.
Keeping your information safe
We have implemented and maintain appropriate technical and organisational security measures, policies and procedures designed to reduce the risk of accidental destruction or loss, or the unauthorised disclosure or access to such information appropriate to the nature of the information concerned. Measures we take include:
- Using Secure Socket Layer encryption technology;
- Limiting the access our staff have to your information to the minimum required to perform their duties;
- Maintaining firewalls and security technologies to minimise the risk of external attack to our servers;
- Ensuring that all your information is subject to data protection laws; and
- Regularly monitoring our security systems.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breaches and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
We will store your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, as explained in this notice.
We will only keep your information that allows us to:
- Comply with relevant legal, regulatory, tax or account requirements
- Maintain business records for analysis and audit purposes
- Defend or take legal action
- Preventing the business and public from fraud
- Deal with future complaints about the service we have provided
- Keep a record if you do not want to receive marketing.
As a general rule, our current retention period for customer information is the latter of either (i) seven years from the date of your application with us; or (ii) seven years from the date of the last repayment date (account closed). However, we will keep your personal data after this time if we must do so for the law, regulatory or existing claims. After this time, your data will be automatically removed.
Your rights
Under data protection legislation, you have several rights (depending on the lawful bases for which we use your personal information) regarding the use of your personal data, as follows:
- Right to Access: If at any point you wish to either confirm whether your personal data is being processed and/or access the personal data we hold on you, you can request to see this information, usually free of charge, and we will respond to this request within a 1-month period. This includes but is not limited to us making available to you a record of any income and expenditure assessment that we have made to consider options with you when you are in financial difficulty. We are happy for you to share such income and expenditure assessments with other lenders and debt advice providers.
- Right to Withdraw Consent/Object to Direct Marketing: If you agreed to us and third parties contacting you about other products and services during the application process but later decide you no longer wish to receive such communications, you can update your contact preferences by contacting a member of our team by calling 0208-532-5022 or by clicking here. All messages we send to you will also explain how you may withdraw consents you have given.
- Right of Data Portability: You also have the right for certain data you have provided Mr Lender with to be provided to you in a structured and commonly used electronic format (for example, a Microsoft Excel File), so that you can move, copy or transfer this data easily to another data controller. You may also request to transmit this data directly to another organisation where it is practical for us to do so.
- Right to Rectification: You have the right to ask us to correct data if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Right to Erasure: In certain circumstances you have the right to request that your personal data is deleted. This includes, for example, if it is no longer needed or there is no longer a legitimate reason for the processing, or if the data in question has otherwise unlawfully been processed.
- Right to Object: In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data (note that this only provides you with the right to raise your objections, not a blanket right to have any and all processing cease).
- Right to Restrict: You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data under certain circumstances, including if you have contested its accuracy and while this is being verified by us, or if you have objected to its processing and while we are considering whether we have legitimate grounds to continue to do so.
- Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling: You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, if this will have a legal or other significant effect on you.
If you would like to exercise any of your rights, you can contact the DPO by clicking here.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
No fee usually required
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 is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
Cookies or similar technology
We use cookies and similar tools across our websites to improve the websites performance and enhance your user experience. Cookies are small text files place on your devices such as your computer or smartphone and are commonly used on the internet. We may use cookies or similar technologies to:
- Essential cookies that are needed for the website to operate
- Remember information about you when visiting our site
- Collect information that helps us understand visitors habits
- For statics such as number of visitors and what pages they visit.
We also use cookies in some of our communications with you to help us understand how you interact with our service and to help us improve our communications.
For more information about cookies click here
Third party links and online advertisements
Third party links, plug-ins and applications: Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. Where we provide links to websites of other organisations we do not control their website and are not responsible for these. This privacy notice does not cover how other organisations process your personal data. We encourage you to read the privacy notices on other websites you visit.
Your right to complain
If you wish to raise a complaint about how we handled your personal data, including in relation to any of the rights outlined above, you can contact us by clicking here or calling 0208-532-5022 and we will investigate your concern.
In the first instance, if you are not fully satisfied with our response, or believe we are processing your data unfairly or unlawfully, you can contact our DPO by clicking here. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can find further information about the ICO and their complaints procedure here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns
Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated in November 2024. If there are any changes we will update this page to tell you, for example, about any new uses of personal data.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new phone number, address or email address.
