Privacy Policy
Advantis take the use of personal data and privacy very seriously and are committed to ensuring that your data is used fairly and lawfully in accordance with the Data Protection Act & GDPR.
For the purposes of the Act, depending upon the status of your account, we may be either the data controller or the data processor of your data. We are the data controller where the title of the account has been formally assigned to Advantis.
This is where we have purchased the title to the account and in all such instances we will have written to you and advised you of this.
We are the data processor where we are acting on behalf of the original creditor or the current owner of the account. This privacy policy explains how Advantis will use, store and share your personal data.
How we obtain personal data
We may receive personal data about you from third parties (our clients who are the owners of the account) and who choose to use the service we offer or from companies from whom we have purchased the account.
We may also obtain information from credit reference agencies. In addition we may also collect information from you or from your appointed representative through the use of our website and from communications between us such as within telephone calls, letters or emails.
Categories of personal data
The personal data that we collect and receive from third parties, from yourself and your personal representatives may include any or all of the following: your name, address, date of birth, relevant account reference numbers, e-mail address, phone number, debt information, payment history, payment details, credit reference information, and any other details relating to your account. This is likely to include information supplied by the original creditor or supplier. We will also retain records of communications from you concerning your account. Where appropriate and where explicit consent has been provided, we also collect limited sensitive personal data as required by the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”). Please note that we may combine personal data we receive from other sources with personal data you give to us and personal data we collect about you.
Additionally, each time you visit our website we may automatically collect information and personal data about your computer for system administration, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type. We use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect your reference number, other non-personally identifiable information that you enter and details of your behaviour patterns, including the tracking of visits across multiple devices. Google’s remarketing and advertising reporting has been enabled to provide additional information for the analysis of visitor characteristics and behaviour.
We do this to help us analyse how users use the site (including behaviour patterns and the tracking of visits across multiple devices), to establish more about our website users and to assist us in managing your account. We do not allow Google to make any attempt to establish the identities of any users of our website.
How we use your personal data
Our use of your personal data is for the legitimate interests of our business. All data Advantis receive is processed in accordance with this privacy policy. We will not share your information with other companies for marketing purposes.
We may use personal data held about you in the following ways:
- For debt collection purposes and those of our group companies including to manage your account, to tailor payment plans to your individual circumstances, to carry out our obligations arising from purchasing your account, to locate you and to check/update your contact details;
- To carry out account analysis for ourselves and our group companies such as to determine whether you are likely to pay your debts;
- To provide services to our clients in relation to debt collection (including to manage your account and to tailor payment plans to your individual circumstances), analysing your account (such as to determine whether you are likely to pay your debts, assessing affordability and to enable our client to make financial decisions), your payment history, account usage, check/update your contact details and to locate you;
- To administer our website
- To improve our website to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner
- To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so
- To prevent money laundering and fraud.
Please note that as a user of our website, you are responsible for keeping any passwords used to access your personal account information confidential.
Advantis may also share your personal data with certain third parties as follows:
- We may share your personal data with third parties who are our clients (the account owner)
- We may subcontract some of our services to sub-contractors and we may share your personal data with our sub-contractors as data processors
- We may share your personal data with our suppliers who provide goods and services to us to enable them to provide these to us. These suppliers are our data processors and may only use your personal data in the way we specify.
- We may share your personal data with third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Advantis, our clients, our employees, agents and subcontractors or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
If you require further information about the purposes for which we use your personal data then please contact our Data Protection Officer:
By post:
The Data Protection Officer
Advantis Credit Ltd
Minton Hollins Building
Shelton Old Road,
Stoke-on-Trent
Staffordshire
ST4 7RY
By email: marked FAO the Data Protection Officer – admin@advantiscredit.co.uk
How we store and secure data
We will retain your information for no longer than 6 years from the date of account closure, in accordance with the recommendations set out in the Data Protection Act. All information that you provide to us is stored on secure servers.
In addition we seek to protect the privacy of your information at all times when you visit our website. If you choose to send personal information to us (i.e. by clicking a Confirm/Send button) the information you supply will be sent and processed in a secure manner. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website.
Your personal information will not be communicated to non-connected third parties (i.e. marketing or advertising companies), except where there is a direct link from this site to an external website and you choose to supply your information independently on those sites. Please observe the privacy policy and terms and conditions of external sites you may be directed to from this site and remain vigilant when using your personal details on the internet.
The data that we collect from you will not be transferred to or stored anywhere outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Cookies
Cookies are small, often encrypted, text files that are placed on your computer’s web browser directories which allow a website to recognize a user’s device. They are commonly used on the internet and often help to improve the user’s overall internet experience.
We use “Session” cookies. These are temporary cookies, which only exist whilst you are using the website, until you close the browser after accessing the website. Session cookies help the website remember what options you chose on the previous page, so you do not need to re-enter information. They are designed to improve your experience whilst using the site. These cookies do not contain personal information and cannot be used to identify you.
We also use cookies to help us improve our service to you. For example, we use Google Analytics, a popular web analytics service provided by Google. Google Analytics uses cookies to help us analyse how users use the site (including behaviour patterns and the tracking of visits across multiple devices), to establish more about our website users and to assist us in managing your account. The cookies collect your IP address, your reference number and certain non-personally identifiable information that you enter. Google’s remarketing and advertising reporting has been enabled to provide additional information for the analysis of visitor characteristics and behaviour. Find out more about how these cookies are used on the Google Privacy site.
You can configure your internet browser to allow or reject cookies. Please refer to your browser’s help area for instructions on how to do this. Note that configuring your browser to reject cookies may cause some websites not to function as they were intended and this may diminish your internet experience. Further information regarding cookies can be found here http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ (links to external website).
Sensitive Personal Data
The Data Protection Act defines certain personal data as ‘sensitive’, for example personal data regarding your physical health and mental health.
In order to carry out our role, we are required by the FCA to understand the circumstances of our customers in order to help them find the best way of resolving their account. This may involve collecting and using sensitive personal data. In certain circumstances then we may, for debt collection purposes, therefore ask you for some sensitive details and we would then ask for your consent to store that information.
Alternatively you may voluntarily give such personal data to us. We will only use this personal data for debt collection purposes and would only share such sensitive personal data with our clients who need to be aware of such information for debt collection purposes only. Any sharing of your sensitive personal data with clients will be on the basis of your consent or if we are required or permitted to do so under the Data Protection Act 1998.
Credit Reference Agencies
The Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) hold personal data about consumers. Most of the personal data held by the CRAs relates to how you have maintained your credit accounts. They also hold address details and personal data from public sources such as the electoral roll, public records including county court judgments, and bankruptcy and insolvency data. We may obtain personal data about you from the CRAs for debt collection purposes and to check your credit history, verify your identity (or someone linked with you), to locate you and to prevent fraud.
Where we have acquired the title of an account we may provide details to the Credit Reference Agencies with regular information about your account, or the behaviour of your account. Other lenders may use this to make decisions on future applications for credit or for the purpose of tracing customers.
We may also obtain information from Credit References Agencies to help locate you and to check/update your contact details and to enable us and our client to make financial decisions.
Data shared with any Credit Reference Agency will be subject to a common CRAIN privacy notice found here : https://www.callcredit.co.uk/legal-information/bureau-privacy-notice
Recorded Phone Calls
We may monitor and/or record phone calls between our staff and you in order to offer you and our staff additional security, resolve complaints, and for training and quality purposes.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We regularly review our policies to ensure they are up-to-date with current legislation requirements, and we reserve the right to amend this policy as and when required. The website will always display our up-to-date privacy policy.
Access to personal data
You are entitled to access the personal data that we hold about you by making a Subject Access Request. If you would like more information on this process or would like to contact us about any aspect of this privacy policy then please contact our Data Protection Officer:
By post:
The Data Protection Officer
Advantis Credit Ltd
Minton Hollins Building
Shelton Old Road,
Stoke-on-Trent
Staffordshire
ST4 7RY
By email: marked FAO the Data Protection Officer – admin@advantiscredit.co.uk
Complaints
If you wish to raise a complaint you can do so in writing to the above address, marking your correspondence for the attention of the Complaints Team. Alternatively you can email your complaint to admin@advantiscredit.co.uk or call one of our advisors on 01782 401101.
