Privacy Policy

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This privacy policy will apply to you if you provide your personal information to ukdebtexpert.co.uk, even if you decide not to go ahead with any service we offer.

Within this privacy policy, we have set out how the company will use your personal data to provide a service to you.

What personal information do we collect?

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:

  • your personal details (e.g. name, date of birth)
  • address details
  • contact details (e.g. phone number, email)
  • special personal information* (e.g. health information)
  • financial information
  • employment information
  • information on how you use our website(s) and products and services
 

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.

  • When you make an application or enquiry to us either by phone, email, our website, by a third party or by any other means
  • Information received from a third party, for example a creditor providing information about an account you hold with them, or where you have previously agreed for your information to be shared with us, for example, if you have been introduced to us by another company
  • When you participate in market research, competitions and promotions provided by us, or on our behalf
  • By adding reviews or interacting with us using social media such as Twitter or Meta platforms (eg. Facebook) etc
  • When you use online platforms, such as an online portal
  • When we may need to obtain up to date information about you to meet our legal or regulatory obligations
  • Where you have given permission for your information to be provided to us

When you make an enquiry to utilise our services we’ll use your information to provide you with appropriate information about any solutions you may be eligible for. 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, by telephone or by sending you an email, text message, WhatsApp 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 your 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).

 

Conducting credit searches 

As part of our business operations, we may need to conduct credit searches to assess your eligibility for certain debt solutions. By engaging with our services, you consent to the processing of your personal data by the credit search agency, which includes Equifax for this purpose.

Credit search agencies, including Equifax, may collect, use, and share personal data in accordance with their Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN). If you would like to understand how Equifax utilises and shares personal data, including the legitimate interests they pursue, please refer to the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN).

 

Ongoing Services

Where we are providing you with advice on debt solutions, 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 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 share information with third parties to set up and administer debt solutions such as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, Trust Deed or Debt Arrangement Scheme.

UK Debt Expert is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a debt advice company, with permission to provide debt counselling, debt adjusting and credit information services.

Our team of experts is dedicated to guiding customers through the complexities of managing and resolving your debts through free and confidential debt counselling services.

Advisors will assess your debts, income, and expenses before providing information on all the debt solutions available to you. It’s important that we do this to ensure you’re able to make informed financial decisions.

Advisors will discuss all UK debt solutions as well as the eligibility criteria for each as part of a free debt counselling session, including:

  •       Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs)
  •       Debt Management Plans (DMPs)
  •       Debt Relief Orders (DROs)
  •       Sequestration
  •       Bankruptcy
  •       Trust Deeds
  •       Minimal Asset Process (MAP)
  •       Debt Arrangement Scheme (DAS)
  •       Debt Settlement Offers

Further information about all debt solutions is available here. It’s important to note that UK Debt Expert does not provide these solutions but works with organisations that can. Fees may apply depending on the solution. Alternative free advice is available at www.moneyhelper.org.uk

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:

  • assessing your eligibility for a product or service, for example a credit check for a credit card or loan application
  • detecting any fraudulent activity which may be taking place, or there is a risk that it could take place
  • checking identity and residency statuses

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 review 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.

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 your details are passed to another company within the Creditfix Group, of which UK Debt Expert Limited is part of, your data will be kept to ensure that the Group can provide provide you with services and comply with legal and regulatory obligations. Your data will be stored for 6 years from the date that we cease to provide you with Group 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.

Websites and marketing

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.


Reviews and Market Research

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.


Legal or Regulatory Obligation

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.

 

Responding to complaints or enquiries

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.

 

Internal Analysis

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:

  • IT Service Providers who provide IT platforms or other IT services
  • Payment Service companies that process transactions for us (e.g. Direct Debits and card transactions)
  • Communication providers (e.g. telephone line providers, and email and text service providers)
  • Printers who print the letters and information packs which we send to you
  • Advertisers and social media companies such as Meta, Google and Twitter for our social media accounts or where we can contact you using your social media account
  • Third parties who help us provide a service, who may have introduced you to our services, or can best administer a product suitable to the individual that is non-insolvency products.

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.

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:

  • the social media web pages are publicly available and you must not provide any personal or sensitive information on our pages that are accessible to the public, such as your account information. We may ask you for your account information via a private message to identify you and to service any request you make; and
  • each social media platform will process any personal information you provide through the platform and will be processed in accordance with its own privacy policy. The privacy policies are available to view on each social media platform.

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:

  • Company security policies and standards
  • staff security awareness
  • role based and biometric access controls to prevent unauthorised access to the information
  • encryption and anonymisation technology
  • anti-malware technologies
  • security monitoring
  • security testing
  • secure archiving and deletion
  • compliance with industry regulation and legislation

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 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.

To allow us to provide advice on all solutions and to ensure the best outcome for your circumstances, you may be transferred to third parties that can best administer guidance, insolvency products or a non-insolvency product suitable to your needs.

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.

Our Partners are made up of categories of business types. When we talk about our clients in this privacy policy, we mean our partners are authorised and regulated debt solution providers in the United Kingdom.

For the purpose of Debt Management Plans, Individual Voluntary Arrangements, Trust Deeds, Debt Relief Orders and secured lending:

  • 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.
  • Finbora Group Limited. Incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC545312 whose registered address is at  4 West Regent Street, 3rd Floor, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 1RW
  • YIP Financial Services Ltd. Incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC644681 whose registered address is at 4 West Regent Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 1RW.
  • Carrington Dean Group Ltd. Incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC225672 whose registered address is at 76 Renfield Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 1NQ
  • 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.
  • 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.

 

For the purpose of  consolidation loans, protections  and insurances, car finance, banking, utility switching, mobile phone contracts and credit building:

  • Your Loan Expert Ltd incorporated and registered in Scotland with company number SC538950 whose registered office is at 89 West Regent Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 2BA
  • Freedom Finance Ltd incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 06297533 whose registered office is at Atlantic House Atlas Business Park, Simonsway, Manchester, M22 5PR
  • Trio Group (North West) Limited incorporated in England and Wales with company number 15868109 whose registered office is at Black Brook House, Hoggs Lane, Chorley, PR7 4AW
  • Simply Money Ltd incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 10145269 and FCA number 796023 whose registered address is at the 5th Floor Beckwith House, 1 Wellington Road North, Stockport, United Kingdom, SK4 1AF.
  • Norton Finance incorporated in England and Wales with company number 5995692 whose registered at Norton House, Mansfield Road, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, S60 2DR
  • Moriarty incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number  14399401 whose registered address is at Edward Pavilion, Albert Dock, Liverpool, England, L3 4AF.
  • TDOT UK Ltd. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 9225672 whose registered address is at Suite A, Floor 2, Avalon, 26-32 Oxford Road, Bournemouth, England, BH8 8EZ.
  • Hype Advice Group Ltd. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 11649752 whose registered address is at The Old School House Manchester Road, Carington, Manchester, M31 AUG.
  • Zuto Ltd. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 05722976 whose registered address is at Winterton House, Winterton Way, Macclesfield, Cheshire, SK11 0LP
  • HD Law Ltd. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 09328279 whose registered address is at Albion Mills, Albion Road, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD10 9TQ
  • TMG Direct. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 10100954 whose registered address is at 27-29 Bridgegate, Rotherham, England, S60 1SN
  • Seopa Ltd incorporated and registered in Northern Ireland with the company number NI46322 whose registered address is at 5th Floor Link Building, Adelaide Exchange, 24-26 Adelaide Street, Belfast, BT2 8GD.
  • LOQBOX Technology UK Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 10583182 whose registered address is at  Henleaze Business Centre, Henleaze, Bristol BS9 4PN.
  • 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.
  • Think Money Limited  incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number – 05530040 whose registered address is Think Park, Mosley Road, Trafford Park, Manchester, M17 1FQ
  • TalkMobile Limited  incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number – 04154716 whose registered address is Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2FN
  • Starling Bank Limited  incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number – 09092149 whose registered address is 3rd Floor, 2 Finsbury Avenue, London, EC2M 2PP
  • Clear Score Technology Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number– 09221862 whose registered address is Vox Studios, Vg 203 1-45 Durham Street, London, SE11 5JH
  • Experian Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number – 00653331 whose registered address is The Sir John Peace Building Experian Way, Ng2 Business Park, Nottingham, NG80 1ZZ
  • The Protection Network Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number – 11001265 whose registered address is 7 Bell Yard, London, WC2A 2JR (Smart Cover Online is a trading style under this Ltd company).
  • Clear Legal Marketing Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 07933243 whose office is at Units 115-119 Timber Wharf 42-50 Worsley Street, Castlefield, Manchester, United Kingdom, M15 4LD
  • Monetise Media Limited incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 07875484 whose registered office is at Unit J Williams Yard, Derby Road, Melbourne, Derby, DE73 8JR.

Use of Twilio and Twilio Flex services

We use third-party analytics services to help understand your usage of our services. In particular, we provide a limited amount of your information (such as sign-up date and some personal information like your email address) to Twilio Inc. (“Twilio”) and utilise Twilio to collect data for analytics purposes when you visit our website or use our product.

As a data processor acting on our behalf, Twilio analyses your use of our website and/or product and tracks our relationship by way of cookies and similar technologies so that we can improve our service to you. For more information on Twilio’s use of cookies, please visit

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/legal/privacy

We may also use Twilio as a medium for communications, either through email, or through messages within our product(s). The Twilio / Twilio Flex Messenger Apps and Apps in Inbox products may also provide you with access to other third party applications such as Stripe. You should consult these third parties’ privacy notices for further information on their use of your personal data.

As part of our service agreements, Twilio collects publicly available contact and social information related to you, such as your email address, gender, company, job title, photos, website URLs, social network handles and physical addresses, to enhance your user experience. For more information on the privacy practices and terms of use at Twilio, please visit https://www.twilio.com/en-us/legal/privacy

If you would like to opt out of having this information collected by or submitted to Twilio, please contact us.

Access to your personal information

You have the right to request from us a copy of the personal information that we may hold about you. This is often called a “Data Subject Access Request”. You can request this information by contacting us as set out below.

Before providing this information to you or to another person or company where you have requested this personal information to be sent to, we may ask for proof of identity or ask sufficient questions to enable us to locate the information and ensure that we’re only providing it were you have given your agreement.

Right to have your personal information corrected

If the personal information we hold about you is incorrect you have the right to request that we correct this.

Right to stop or limit the processing of the data we carry out

You may request that your personal information is deleted or that we stop processing the information if we’re no longer entitled to process it. There may be occasions where we are unable to delete the data due to our legal or regulatory obligations. We will however discuss this with you if you request for your information to be deleted.

Portability

In some cases you may be able to request for your information to be provided to you or to another company in a format that can be processed electronically by you or the other company. If you want to request this you’ll need to contact us.

If you have any questions or queries about how we use your personal information you can contact us by emailing

[email protected].

If you are not happy with how we process your personal information you should contact us in the first instance. If you’re not happy with how we have dealt with your complaint you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can find their details on their website at https://ico.org.uk/

If you click on a link that takes you to a third party website that is not ours we will not be responsible for how they use your personal data. You should read its own privacy policy to understand how they may use your personal data.

Cookies are text files placed by websites onto your computer. They collect standard internet log and visitor behaviour information.

We may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve the Website and to deliver a better and more personalised service. Some of the cookies we use are essential for the site to operate.

If you register with us or if you continue to use the Website, you agree to our use of cookies. We monitor site usage through the use of CookiesFirst. Cookies are widely used in order to make the Website work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Cookie Name     Purpose

__utma This cookie is used to monitor the number of times a visitor has been to the site related to the cookie, when they first visited the site, and when they were last on the site. Google Analytics uses the information from this cookie to calculate things like Days and Visits to purchase.

__utmb

__utmc These two cookies work together to establish how long a visit has taken. b signals when a user enters the site and c signals when a user leaves.

__utmz Captures how a visitor accessed the site including: which search engine was used, what link was clicked on, what keywords were used and geographical location.

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of the Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon you visit our site.

For further information please visit the websites www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Any updates to this privacy policy will be found on this page. If we make any important or significant changes to the way we may collect and use your personal information we will endeavour to notify you of this change.

Updated: 21/03/24