Privacy Policy – Rural Asset Finance

The information (which includes Personal Data) which you the Client(s) and/or the Guarantor(s) (collectively “you”, “your”) provide to Rural Asset Finance Limited (the “Company” or “we” or “us”) by completing this form is collected and used by the Company in order to verify your identity, to consider your application for credit and credit related services, to make credit decisions about you and any associated person, to prevent or detect money laundering and fraud and for statistical or market research purposes.

The Company is aware of its responsibilities to handle your Personal Data with care, to keep it secure and to comply with applicable Data Protection Laws (as defined in the FAQs section below). The Company has put appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to ensure the security of your Personal Data.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

Under applicable Data Protection Laws, all processing must be justified by a lawful basis. In the majority of cases, processing will be justified on the basis that the processing is necessary to take steps at your request to enter into a contract (for example when you complete the Client Details Form in order to apply for a credit facility or enter into a guarantee), to support legitimate interests that the Company has as a business (for example, in carrying out credit checks to assess your creditworthiness), and/or to comply with a relevant legal obligation.

When you make an application or agree to enter into a guarantee with the Company, the Company may provide information connected to your application, the facility agreement or guarantee to: (i) any other guarantor or indemnifier in respect of the facility agreement and guarantee to enable them to assess their obligations to the Company or so that the Company can enforce such obligations; (ii) any person or business acting on the Company’s behalf including our appointed third party service providers, accountants, bankers or solicitors to enable them to carry out their contractual services to the Company; (iii) any person acting on your behalf including third party introducers and credit brokers, whether or not as your agents; (iv). any solicitors or accountants acting on your behalf; (v) any person to whom the Company may wish to transfer the benefit of the finance agreement and/or guarantee to enable such transfer to take place; (vi) any organisation to whom the Company is under a duty to report to, or the law allows the Company to report to, such as Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) and Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs).

We may also share or use your information for specific reasons as listed below:

Using your information to prevent terrorism, crime and fraud: The Company may disclose information to government bodies, where required to comply with the international fight against terrorism and other criminal activities. In order to protect the Company and its customers against fraud, money laundering and other crime, the Company will share your Personal Data with fraud prevention agencies (FPAs). It is important that you provide accurate information. The Company may check your details with FPAs and if you provide false or inaccurate information or the Company suspects fraud, this information may be recorded. FPA records will be shared with law enforcement agencies, the Company, as well as other organisations to help make decisions on credit and insurance proposals or claims for you and members of your household.
Joint Parties: If you are making a joint application or tell us that you have a financial associate (such as members of an LLP or directors of a company), we will link your records together, so you must be sure that they are aware of and agree to you disclosing information about them to the Company. When the Client applies for a loan as a joint applicant, this means that the Client’s Personal Data will be shared with the other applicant. When there is a Guarantor, the Client’s Personal Data will be shared with the Guarantor.
Automated Decision Making and Profiling: When you make an application or agree to enter into a guarantee with the Company, an automated system known as credit scoring, which is a form of profiling, may be used when considering whether to approve your application or guarantee. It is a method of assessing your credit risk based on a range of data, including the conduct of previous similar credit facilities or accounts. Credit scoring takes account of information from three sources – the information provided on the credit facility or guarantee application form, information provided by CRAs and information that may already be held about you by the Company and its Group Members (as defined below). A credit scoring system will consider information from these sources, to make an overall assessment of the application. This profiling and/or the CRA checks referred to below may result in an automated decision being made about whether to offer a credit facility. You have certain rights in respect of automated decision making. See “Your Rights” section below for more information about your rights.
Credit Reference Agencies: We will search your record and the record of your financial associates (such as members of an LLP or directors of a company) at CRAs. You should ensure that you make this notice available to your financial associates. The Company, its Group Members and other organisations provide information to CRAs about you, your financial associates and business. The CRAs will add this information to their record about you and this will be seen by other organisations that make similar searches using similar CRAs. This and other information about you and those with whom you are linked financially may be used to make credit decisions about you and those with whom you are financially linked. The Company will also add details of your application to your record with the CRAs. These records will be shared with other organisations and may be used and searched by the Company and these other organisations to consider applications for credit and credit related services, such as insurance, for you and any associated person, trace debtors, recover debts and prevent or detect money laundering and fraud. You have a right to apply to the CRAs for a copy of your file. The CRAs we use are Equifax (whose address is at Customer Service Centre, P.O. Box 10036 Leicester, LE3 4FS) and Experian (whose address is at Experian Ltd, Customer Support Centre, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF).
Service contact and marketing material: The Company may use your Personal Data to send you information about the application and, with your permission, direct marketing material about our goods and/or services.
CRAIN notice: Please refer to the notice on page 3 relating to the CRAs.

YOUR RIGHTS

Subject to certain conditions and exemptions, you may request access to your data, the correction of any mistakes in our files, the erasure of data where this is no longer required, or a restriction on the processing of your data. You may object to the processing of your data (where the legal basis for that processing is our legitimate interests), request a portable copy of your data (where the legal basis of the processing is your consent or the performance of a contract) and various information in relation to any automated decision making and profiling.

You may also request further information about the mechanisms we rely upon to carry out any international transfers of your personal data. You have a right to object (within 21 days of receiving notice that a decision has been taken) to significant decisions made by us which are based solely on automated processing of your personal data (for example, a decision about whether to offer you credit). Following receipt of the notice, you may request that we reconsider the decision, or take a new decision which is not based solely on automated processing.

You may also exercise a right to complain to your local Supervisory Authority (which, in the UK, is the Information Commissioner’s Office). For more information about these rights, contact us using the information in the Contact and Complaints section below.

RETENTION OF YOUR INFORMATION

The Company will retain your Personal Data for no longer than is necessary to process your application for a credit facility or to enter into a guarantee, or for legal, regulatory, tax or accounting requirements which may require that we retain your Personal Data for longer. In specific circumstances we may also retain your Personal Data for longer periods of time so that we have an accurate record of your dealings with us in the event of any complaints or challenges.

CONTACTS AND COMPLAINTS

For all issues arising from this data protection statement, including requests to exercise your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the information below. If you have a complaint or concern about how we use your Personal Data, please contact us in the first instance and we will attempt to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer, who can be contacted directly: By Email:compliance@ruralassetfinance.com Or By Post: FAO Data Protection Officer, Rural Asset Finance Limited 1 Cambridge House, Camboro Business Park, Oakington Road, Girton, Cambridge CB3 0QH.

FAQS

What are Data Protection Laws? Up until 25 May 2018, this is the Data Protection Act 1998. On and from 25 May 2018 these are the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 616/679 (“GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

What is Personal Data? This is any information which relates to a living individual who can be identified from data or from such data combined with other information which is in the possession of the data controller. For example, the Personal Data we collect from you when you complete the Client Details Form will include basic contact details such as your full name, personal address, company name and address, your business address, trading name, personal telephone number, business telephone number, contact person within your business, date of birth, email address, office title (e.g. Director, Partner, Shareholder or Guarantor) and percentage of your shareholding in a company.

What is a Group Member? This means any company in the same group of companies as Rural Asset Finance Limited including its holding company and any subsidiaries (within the meaning of section 1159 of the Companies Act 2006).

What is a Credit Reference Agency and Fraud Prevention Agency? Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) collect and maintain information on consumers’ businesses credit behaviour on behalf of organisations in the UK. Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs) collect, maintain and share information on known and suspected fraudulent activity. Some CRAs also act as FPAs.

Why does the Company use CRAs and FPAs? The Company contacts CRAs and FPAs to get information on the Client’s and the Guarantor’s/s’ credit behaviour with other organisations. This will help the Company make the best possible assessment of the Client’s and Guarantor’s/s’ overall situation before they make a decision.

Where do they get the information? Publicly available information includes the Electoral Register from Local Authorities, County Court Judgments from Registry Trust and Bankruptcy Orders (and other similar orders) from the Insolvency Service. Credit information comes from information on applications to banks, building societies, credit card companies etc. and also from the conduct of those accounts. Company information and information about directors and shareholders comes from Companies House and other publicly available directories and proprietary directories at CRAs.

How will a Client and the Guarantor(s) know if any information about them is to be sent to a CRA or FPA? The Company will inform the Client and Guarantor(s), when they make an application or agree to enter into a guarantee with the Company, if their application data is to be supplied to any CRAs or FPAs. The Client and the Guarantor(s) can ask the Company at any time the name of CRAs and FPAs to whom the Company has supplied their information to.

Who controls what such agencies are allowed to do with the data? All organisations that collect and process Personal Data are regulated by the Data Protection Laws.

CREDIT REFERENCE AGENCY INFORMATION NOTICE

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies (“CRAs”). Where you take banking 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;
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 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 that may be seen by other lenders.

If you are making a joint application, or tell us that you have a spouse or financial associate, we will link your records together, so you should make sure you discuss this with them, and share with them this information, before lodging the application. CRAs will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or your partner successfully files for a disassociation with the CRAs to break that link.

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at www.experian.co.uk/crain CRAIN is also accessible from each of the three CRAs.

www.callcredit.co.uk/crain

Equifax
www.equifax.co.uk/crain

Experian:
www.experian.co.uk/crain

Registered Office: 1 Cambridge House, Camboro Business Park, Oakington Road, Girton, Cambridge, CB3 0QH.

Tel: 0345 0303 475

Email: enquiries@ruralassetfinance.com

Company Registration No. 13785966

VAT Registration Number: 451 8842 75

EORI Number: GB451884275000

ICO Data Protection Registration Number: ZB636430