This Privacy Policy describes how and why Honeycomb Finance Limited (We or the Company) acquire and use personal information about you (Personal Data).
For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act) and the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), the Company is the data controller. Our Information Commissioner’s Office Data Protection registration number is ZA046977
We collect Personal Data directly from you via the Website and other communications between us when you use or apply to use our services, including when you apply to us for a loan via a credit broker and they transfer your personal data to us in accordance with your agreement with them. This includes:
We also collect your Personal Data from third parties:
We use your Personal Data which we collect as set out above to:
We may share your personal information with:
In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more CRAs. 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:
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 borrow 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; for our initial search on application this may be a 'soft footprint' which cannot be seen by other lenders but if you proceed to take out a loan with us this footprint will be visible to others who search you credit record.
Records remain on file with CRAs and FPAs for 6 years after they are closed, whether settled by you or defaulted.
More information about CRAs and how they use personal information is available at https://www.experian.co.uk/legal/crain/ or you can contact the agencies below:
Transunion Customer Relations, TransUnion Information Group, One Park Lane, Leeds, LS3 1EP or visit www.transunion.co.uk
Equifax PLC Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 3001, Bradford, BD1 5US Tel: 0870 010 0583 or visit www.myequifax.co.uk
Experian Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF Tel: 0870 241 6212 or visit www.experian.co.uk
We use automated decision-making software to underwrite your loan. Our automated decision-making systems include but are not limited to the following inputs:
This means we may automatically decide that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk if our processing reveals your behaviour to be consistent with money laundering or known fraudulent conduct, is inconsistent with any previous information you’ve provided, or you appear to have deliberately hidden your true identity.
If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the loan you have requested or we may stop providing our service to you.
A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services or financing to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us using the details provided in this Privacy Policy.
The use of automated decision-making software is a requirement to enter into a loan agreement with us. You have the right to request that we manually review the results of the automated decision rendered.
Our use of your Personal Data as outlined above is subject to different legal bases for processing, including where necessary for:
Where our use of your data is not necessary for one of the purposes outlined above we may seek your consent to use it in a particular way, for example if we ask you to complete a customer survey, or request your consent to pass your information to named third parties for the purposes of marketing to you by electronic means. Where we ask for your consent you are free to refuse our use of the data for those purposes and you may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us using the details set out below.
We will retain your personal data for as long as is necessary for the relevant purposes, as set out above. Once our relationship with you comes to an end, we will keep your personal data for a further 7 years to ensure we comply with our legal obligations and meet our legitimate business needs.
Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time, and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years.
All our operations are located within the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) and we do not anticipate that we will transfer your Personal Data outside the EEA. However, in the event that we do need to transfer your Personal Data outside the EEA, for example if we outsource any of our loan administration services to a party located outside the EEA, before we do so we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that any such transfer is made securely and that there is adequate protection in place in order to protect your Personal Data, as required by the Act and Chapter V of the GDPR, including requiring the transferee to enter into model contractual clauses. Please contact us if you wish to obtain a copy of the relevant safeguards.
Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing.
We will take reasonable measures to protect Personal Data in our possession from loss, misuse and unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Personal Data is secured by us in the following ways:
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
We will require third parties acting on our behalf who collect or use your Personal Data under our instructions to agree to safeguard your Personal Data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and comply with data protection law.
Unless you have opted out, we may contact you via email to inform you about other products or services provided by us that are similar to those that you have already agreed to, requested or enquired about.
You have the right at any time to ask us not to use your Personal Data for marketing purposes by notifying us using the contact details set out in the "Contact" section below
Our Website may, from time to time, contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any of those websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for their operation. Please check these policies before you submit any Personal Data to those websites.
Your personal information is protected under data protection law and you have a number of rights (see below) which you can seek to exercise. Please contact us in writing, by email or telephone using the details shown under 'Contact and Complaints' below if you wish to do so, or if you have any queries in relation to your rights. Please note these rights do not apply in all circumstances.
Subject to certain exceptions, you have the right of access to your Personal Data that we hold.
If you discover that the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you have the right to have this information rectified (i.e. corrected).
You may ask us to delete information we hold about you in certain circumstances. This right is not absolute, and it may not be possible for us to delete the information we hold about you, for example, if we have an ongoing contractual relationship or are required to retain information to comply with our legal obligations.
In some cases you may have the right to have the processing of your personal information restricted. For example, where you contest the accuracy of your personal information, its use may be restricted until the accuracy is verified.
You may object to the processing of your personal information (including profiling) when it is based upon our legitimate interests. You may also object to the processing of your personal information for the purposes of direct marketing and for the purposes of statistical analysis.
You have the right to receive, move, copy or transfer your personal information to another controller when we are processing your personal information based on consent or on a contract and the processing is carried out by automated means.
"Cookies" are small data files that websites download to a user’s computer, mobile phone or tablet hard drive. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. We or our service providers send cookies when you visit our Website or websites where our ads appear, make purchases, request or personalise information, or register yourself for certain services. Accepting the cookies used on our Website, sites that are provided by another company on our behalf, or sites where our ads appear may give us access to information about your browsing preferences, which we may use to improve the services we provide to our users, and to personalise and enhance your user experience. We use similar technologies within emails to understand whether the email has been read or if any links have been clicked by you. Cookies are typically classified as either "session" cookies or "persistent" cookies.
You can reject cookies or selectively accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse all or some cookies. If cookies are not accepted, there may be some features of our Website that will not be available and some websites may not display properly. In most instances, however, you may reject a cookie and still be able to navigate our Website without issue. Information on how to adjust cookie preferences (e.g., preventing your browser from accepting new cookies, etc.) are located in the help and support section of your browser. If you continue to use our Website without changing your settings, we will assume that you agree to receive all cookies on the Website.
We DO NOT store passwords or any other information about a visitor in a cookie that would identify them, locate them, and determine their preferences or their financial activity. Aggregated customer information may help assess the performance of our Website and develop strategies to maximise utility. This information may be provided to other companies, including but not limited to third party advertisers. This information does NOT include any of your Personal Data.
The cookies that we use on the Website and the purpose of their use are:
This Policy may be amended from time to time and we will give you notice of material changes by posting a notice regarding the changes on our Website for 60 days or by sending notification via email to the email address you have provided. Please check our Website frequently to see any updates or changes to this Policy.
If you have any questions about how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy, if you have any comments or wish to seek to exercise any of your rights as outlined above or to complain, please contact us via email at customerservices@honeycombfinance.com.
You may also lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF telephone 0303 123 1113. www.ico.org.uk/.
We may use cookies, web beacons or similar devices to help us understand which parts of this site you find most useful and to optimise your browsing experience.
If you choose, you can set your browser to inform you when cookies are sent or you may choose not to accept cookies. If you haven't done this, the system will issue cookies when you visit the site.
We may collect IP addresses for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers (if any)
Our websites may include links to third-party websites. These third parties are not subject to this Privacy Policy. Whenever you visit a third-party website, you should review its privacy notice. We do not accept any responsibility for any such third party websites or other sites, nor for any third party to whom we transfer your data in accordance with this Privacy Policy, including without limitation for their accuracy, security, the products or services which they offer or any information which is collected through them.
At Honeycomb Finance, we make your safety and security a top priority and are committed to protecting your personal and financial information. If we collect personal information from you, we will protect that information with controls based upon internationally recognised security standards, regulations, and industry-based best practices.
Honeycomb Finance maintains customer authentication procedures to protect your personal information and account from identity theft. These procedures are for your protection. If you suspect a website is "spoofing" or pretending to be a Honeycomb Finance website do not enter personal information but instead contact us by emailing customerservices@honeycombfinance.com.
If you receive an email that claims to be from us but you are not sure, or if you think it is suspicious, do not click on any of the links in the e-mail. Instead forward it to us at customerservices@honeycombfinance.com then delete it.
Honeycomb is a trading style of Honeycomb Finance ltd, registered in England and Wales (company number 08849931). Registered office: 11-12 Hanover Square, London, W1S 1JJ. Honeycomb Finance ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 630704).