Guide to how we use your personal information and when we will share it with Credit Reference Agencies and Fraud Prevention Agencies.
In order to process your application we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more Credit Reference Agencies (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:
- 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 also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your loan repayments, settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. Your data will also be linked to the data of your spouse, any joint applicants or other financial associates, by the 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.
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 in the full Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) document. You can request a copy of the full document from our offices. Alternatively you can view and download it from any of the websites below, which will all take you to the same document.
CRAIN Links:
Experian:
TransUnion:
Equifax: