This privacy policy will apply to you if you provide your personal information to yourdebt-expert.co.uk, even if you decide not to go ahead with any service we offer.
As a trading style of the Carrington Dean Group Limited, part of the Creditfix Group, the information you provide on this site will also be used within the company.
Within this privacy policy we have set out how these companies will use your personal data to provide their product or service to you.
The information we collect from you depends on the product or service you apply for, or the service that we provide to you. We will only collect information that we actually need, or where we’re required to collect the information to enable us to perform our legal, regulatory or contractual obligations necessary to provide you with the products or services, or where we have your permission.
This will likely include the collection of:
Special personal information
Data protection law defines some personal information as “special categories of data”. This includes information about physical or mental health, sexual life, religious beliefs, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, trade union membership or biometric data. This information may be necessary to collect when understanding the reason for your financial circumstances, or where it may help us to provide a better service to you. For example, a period of ill health could have caused you to fall behind with your regular payments to your creditors. Where we need to collect and process this type of data about you, by providing this information to us you give your explicit consent for us and any other third party to process this special data as set out in this privacy policy, unless we have a legal obligation to process this type of data. Any personal information about you relating to criminal convictions or offences may only be used by us when authorised by law.
Information about other people
If you provide personal information about someone else, for example when a joint application is made, you must do so with the permission of the other person. If you enter into a service jointly with another person (for example, linked Individual Voluntary Arrangements), your personal information and any information about the service provided to you will be shared with the other person. We will use the personal information about the other person in the ways as described in this privacy policy. How do we collect your personal information? We collect your information in a number of ways.
We can only use your personal information where it falls into one or more of the following categories:
Initial Application/Advice
Where you make an application or enquiry for one of our products or services we’ll use your information to provide you with appropriate information about any solutions we may be able to offer to you. If you cannot provide this information we may not be able to progress with your application or enquiry.
We may also use this information to contact you about and process your application, for example, sending you an email, text message or letter to welcome you to our services.
We will process the personal data we collect about you for the purposes set out below at purposes for processing your personal data.
After you have made you initial application/enquiry, if you also decide to go ahead with any of the products or services that we offer, the sections below explain how we will also process your data when we provide that particular product(s) or service(s).
Ongoing Services
Where we are providing you with a debt solution, such as a Debt Arrangement Scheme (DAS), Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA); Trust Deed, or with claims management services or any other financial services solution, we will process your personal information to administer the services we provide. This may include contacting you where we may need further information or sending you updates on the progress of the services we provide to you.
Where we provide ongoing services, we will normally require you to agree to the terms and conditions of the debt solution or service. These will set out how we will provide the services to you and where we will be required, under the terms and conditions, to process your personal information. For example, we would need to your share information with your creditors to enable us to set up and administer an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, Trust Deed or Debt Arrangement Scheme.
Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA)
If you enter into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), it will be provided by Creditfix. The information below specifically explains how and why your personal data will be used so that the services can be provided to you.
What personal data will we need to collect?
To be able to provide our services we will need to collect certain categories of personal data. This will include:
Who will the data be shared with?
These companies help us to provide our services to you. We have contracts in place with all providers to ensure that they comply with their data protection obligations and ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place.
Trust Deed
If you enter into a Trust Deed, it will be provided by Carrington Dean. The information below specifically explains how and why your personal data will be used so that the services can be provided to you.
Who will the data be shared with?
These companies help us to provide our services to you. We have contracts in place with all providers to ensure that they comply with their data protection obligations and ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place.
Debt Arrangement Scheme
If a Debt Payment Programme (DPP) under the Debt Arrangement Scheme is the solution you decide on, an expert will collect and process your personal data to help you with your application and administer your DPP. The information below specifically explains how and why your personal data will be used so that the services can be provided to you.
What personal data will we need to collect?
To be able to provide our services we will need to collect certain categories of personal data. This will include:
This is required to enable a DPP to be entered into and to fulfil our contractual obligations with you, and to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations.
Who will the data be shared with?
Your personal information will be shared with creditors and debt collectors who you owe money to so that we can arrange a payment arrangement under your debt arrangement scheme. This is a key part of the services we’ve contractually agreed to provide to you.
We will submit your DPP application to the DAS Administrator for approval.
If your DPP is approved, your details will be published on the publicly accessible DAS Register, maintained by the Accountant in Bankruptcy.
We will pass information about you and your approved Debt Payment Programme to the Payments Distributor appointed to deal with the payments due into your DPP.
Our regulators, such as the DAS Administrator, the Information Commissioner’s Office or any other regulatory body or authority may request certain information as part of supervising us. We would have a legal or regulatory obligation to provide this.
Your personal data may be shared with tracing agents where we have a legitimate interest to obtain up to date contact information to help us to continue to provide the services to you.
If you have provided your authority or we have a legitimate interest to do so, or where we may be legally entitled to, we will share information with credit reference agencies (CRAs) to obtain information about your financial history or your credit commitments. We collect your information in a number of ways.
For further information on how CRAs may use your personal information you can view the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice here or from the three main CRAs – Callcredit; Equifax; and Experian.Credit
An automated decision is one which we rely on a computer or system to assess the information you provide to us to make a decision about you. This may include:
If we do make an automated decision about you, in some cases you have the right to ask that we do not make our final decision based solely on the automated decision, and you can also object to the automated decision and ask that someone reviews it. If you want to do this, you’d need to contact us, or use the contact information which will be provided to you once you’ve received the automated decision.
To help us keep you up to date about the products and services that we provide to you, and to ensure that you’re kept fully informed, we may contact you by letter, telephone, email, text message, WhatsApp, push notifications, social media or may send you messages by any online customer platforms or other electronic means.
If you start an application for a product or service through us we will attempt to contact you shortly after if you were unable to complete your application for whatever reason.
If you do not want to be contacted in a particular way then you can request this at any time, but if we are providing a service to you, we do need to be able to send you communications. This can often be due to a legal or regulatory requirement.
It is important that you keep us up to date when you change your contact details to ensure that we use your up to date contact information.
How long do we keep your data?
If you do not go ahead with any product or service with us, your personal information will normally be deleted after 12 months unless we have another reason to keep your personal information, for example, if you have given your consent to receive marketing information from us. We will delete your information sooner if you ask us to.
If you become our customer by entering a debt solution, we will keep your data to ensure that we provide you with our services and comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. Your data will be stored for 6 years from the date that we cease to provide you with our services. We cannot delete this data if you ask us to because we are required to keep it by law. After this time, we will delete the information or anonymise the data so that it cannot be linked back to you.
To help us understand you better and provide you with information about other products which may be suitable and relevant, we will use your personal information to create a profile of you and your circumstances. This allows us to provide more relevant, accurate and tailored services to you. For example, we may assess your income and expenditure to determine whether you would be eligible for a debt solution through us. We believe we have a legitimate interest to do this and that it is not against your rights.
However, if you don’t want us to profile your personal information this way, to then better enable us to tailor any marketing communications to you, you can contact us to let us know that you wish for your personal data not to be used in this way.
Where we have a copy of your personal information we may contact you to ask you to provide a review about the services you’ve received or where we are carrying out market research which may help us design future products and services or to help improve our current services. Although this information would really help us, you wouldn’t be required to provide us with this information unless you were happy to. We consider that this is in our legitimate interests to contact you in this way for market research purposes.
We are required to process your personal information where we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so, for example, to adhere to anti-money laundering or our regulatory obligations.
If you make an enquiry or complaint with us, we will use your personal information to investigate the complaint and deal with your enquiry. We have a legal and regulatory obligation to deal with your complaint appropriately.
As part of our legitimate interest to develop our business and our products we will use your personal information to assess our performance as a business and for statistical analysis. We will use as little personal data as we can to achieve this. We may also share this analysis with third parties who provide us with services and where we have a contractual obligation to do so.
We may also share your personal information with the following organisations:
These companies help us to provide our services to you. We will have a contract in place with any provider who directly provides us with such direct services to ensure that they comply with their data protection obligations and ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place.
We may also share your personal information where we have your consent to do so or where we’re required to do so under a legal or regulatory obligation or court order, such as the police, local authorities or the courts.
The personal information we have collected from you may be shared with law enforcement agencies and fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud, money-laundering and terrorist financing and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. Further details of how your information is used by us and these fraud prevention agencies, and your data protection rights, can be found by contacting us or email us at [email protected]
We use publicly available social media platforms to promote our services, to provide updates and to share any news and promotional updates. We may collect personal information from these social media platforms, for example, if you post a message on our Facebook page. By providing any of your information to us through these platforms you should be aware that:
We will only share your personal information outside the European Economic Area (EEA), where we have your consent; to comply with a legal obligation; or where we work with a business partner to enable us to provide you with our services, and they process information outside of the EEA.
If we do share your information outside of the EEA we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place. This may include putting in place a contract with the business partner that means they must protect the personal data to the same standards as the EEA (this may include defined model clauses), or only share the data to a business partner in a non-EEA country where the privacy laws provide the same protection as within the EEA or where they are part of a Privacy Shield.
We take the protection of personal information very seriously and we will maintain appropriate measures to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information you have provided. Such measures include:
If you have provided us with your consent or where we are legally entitled to do so, we may contact you to let you know about other offers, products and services that we provide which we think you may be interested or that may benefit you. We may do this through post, emails, text messages, WhatsApp, telephone, push notifications, social media or other electronic means.
You can easily let us know at any time if you would no longer like to receive these messages. You can contact us using the details below, emailing us at [email protected] or unsubscribing using the link or information within the message.
When you visit our website or similar websites Google may use our advertisements promoting our products and services which may appear on other third party websites you visit across the internet for remarketing purposes, including cross-device remarketing. Google and other third parties will use cookies to tailor advertisements for website users based on their previous visit to our website. More information about cookies can be found below.
We do not have any control over the advertisements you see on other third party websites however you can request to opt out or customise these advertisements by using the Google Ads Preference Manager.
We record some of the telephone calls you make to us or we make to you or any other third party. This is for training, monitoring and quality purposes and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. Some telephone calls may be observed by staff for training and development purposes.
We may keep a copy of the telephone calls for up to 6 years from the date the telephone call was made.
To allow us to provide a service, or in instances where a site user does not qualify for products administered by the Group, people will be transferred to partners that can best administer guidance or a non-insolvency product suitable to the individual.
We transfer data to our partners to enable our partners to deliver to you, products, services and information that you have expressed interest in, or that are compatible with the reason you provided your personal data. We may do this because you gave your consent. Once we have delivered your personal data to our partner that partner becomes the controller of your personal data and they will treat your personal data in accordance with their privacy policy. Once your personal data has been delivered to our client we are no longer responsible for your personal data. Our Partners have their own privacy policies in relation to the data they hold or process. You can ask them about their privacy policy when they contact you.
For the purpose of Individual Voluntary Arrangements, Debt Management Plans, Debt Relief Orders and secured lending:
GW Financial Solutions (UK) Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 06855313 whose registered address is at 82 Reddish Road, Stockport, Cheshire, SK5 7QU.
Financial Wellness Group Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 05254787 whose registered address is at Think Park Mosley Road, Trafford Park, Manchester, M17 1FQ.
Back2Credit Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 10508037 whose registered address is at Tricorn House 9th Floor Botanical Suite, Hagley Road, Birmingham, England, B16 8TU.
MLS Solvency Limited. Incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC502966 whose registered address is at 58 West Regent Street, 3rd Floor, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 2QZ.
Simplify Debt Limited. Incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC699376 whose registered address is at C/O Mclay, Mcalister & Mcgibbon Llp, 145 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 5JF.
Phoenix Insolvency Practitioners Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 12437227 whose registered address is at Earl Mill, Dowry Street, Oldham, England, OL8 2PF.
AF Solutions Limited incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC712784 whose registered address is at 1/1 697 Cathcart Road, Glasgow, Scotland, G42 8UA.
MCM Finance Limited incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC655091 whose registered address is at 2 Canal Gardens, Elderslie, Johnstone, Scotland, PA5 9AB
The Insolvency Guys incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 11814670 whose registered address is at Suite 138, Peel House 30 The Downs, Altrincham, Cheshire, England, WA14 2PX
Aspire Solutions (UK) Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 6406978 whose registered address is at 253 Western Avenue, Sandfields, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, SA12 7NF
Astute Finance Ltd incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 11334616 whose registered address is at 93 Lapwing Lane, Manchester, England, M20 6UR.
RMS Debt Solutions incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC680080 whose registered address is at C/O Lockhart Amin Accountants, 159 King Street, Rutherglen, G73 1BZ
Hanover Insolvency Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 07204268 whose registered address is at Sale Point 2nd Floor, 126-150 Washway Road, Sale, Manchester, England, M33 6AG.
Money Plus Group incorporated and registered in England and Wales with the company number 07310059 whose registered address is at Riverside, New Bailey Street, Manchester, M3 5FS.
Consumer Links incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 09689776 whose registered address is 6th Floor 49 Peter Street, Manchester, England, M2 3NG.