Privacy

Privacy policy

This website (the "Site") is operated by Wesleyan Assurance Society ("we", "us" or "our").  By using and visiting our Site and using our services you agree to this privacy policy.  We respect the privacy of visitors to our Site and those who use our services. We recognise that when you choose to provide us with information about yourself, you trust us to act in a responsible manner.  That's why we have put a policy in place to protect your personal information.  Please read on for more details about our privacy practices.

As our customers we already hold personal information about you which has been collected in and will continue to be used in accordance with the privacy statement set out below, this is contained on our terms of business.

The Wesleyan Group will use the personal details and information you have provided for the provision of products, services, administration, marketing, risk assessment, fraud prevention and regulatory purposes. We may also need to disclose your information to other service providers or carefully selected third parties for these purposes. If you are a joint applicant the Wesleyan may also disclose your information where necessary to other joint applicant(s).

By submitting this information to us, you consent to our processing sensitive personal information about you where this is necessary or appropriate. ‘Sensitive’ personal data may include, for example, information relating to medical health or criminal convictions, which we may use for assessment and servicing purposes.

We may also share information with other organisations with which we have a business relationship. We may analyse your transactions to develop and maintain an up to-date picture of you which we and/or linked suppliers can use to keep you informed about other products and services which we (or they) think might be of interest.

If you wish to be contacted by email about products, special offers or discounts, then you must also have provided express consent to us. From time to time we may also contact you for research and/or marketing purposes by mail or telephone. If you do not want to be contacted for research and/or marketing purposes by one or more of these methods, please advise us and we will amend our records. Please remember, we will be unable to provide you with information about products, special offers or discounts.

Any personal information that you provide to us through the Site will be governed by the privacy policy set out below in addition to the privacy statement above:

What information do we collect? How do we use it?

At times we may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, which may include sensitive personal information. Generally this information is requested when you request information on or apply for a product or service, provide information to our advisers or when using the Site you register, login or change your details or preferences.  We and our affiliates may gather and use information about you in the following ways:

• We will use your personal information and information we obtain from other sources for dealing with your enquiries, administration and customer services, considering and processing your application for products or services, for marketing, for credit searches and to ensure that the content, services and advertising that we offer are tailored to your needs and interests.  We may share your personal information with any joint account holders for a product, our affiliates, service providers and agents for these purposes.
• In assessing your application for products and services, to prevent fraud, to check your identity and to prevent money laundering, we may (i) search the files of credit reference agencies who will record any credit searches on your file; (ii) check your details with fraud prevention agencies; and (iii) disclose details of how you conduct your accounts to such agencies.  The information may be used by other credit grantors for making credit decisions about you and the people with whom you are financially associated, for fraud prevention, money laundering prevention and occasionally for tracing debtors.  Information used for these purposes will include publicly available information such as electoral roll, county court judgments, bankruptcy orders or repossessions. We will also pass on any information you provide to us and any information we collect from other sources about you to potential lenders and insurers (if you have requested payment protection insurance).
• We may disclose personal information in order to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• We may monitor user traffic patterns and behaviour and Site usage.
• We may keep your personal information for a reasonable period for these purposes.
• By providing us with your personal information you consent to our processing your personal information for the above purposes. You also consent to our transferring your information to countries or jurisdictions which do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK, if necessary, for the above purposes. If we do make such a transfer, we will, if appropriate, put a contract in place to ensure your information is protected.

Use of cookies

We may use information obtained about you from cookies (files which are sent to us by your computer or other access device) which we can access when you visit our Site in future.  We do this to allow us to identify users and personalise the Site wherever possible.  The cookies store small pieces of information about our visitors, such as names and email addresses.  This means that on future visits to our Site, we can identify past visitors and welcome them back.

If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies.  

If you want to stop cookies being stored on your computer in future, please refer to your browser manufacturer’s instructions by clicking “Help” in your browser menu. Further information on deleting or controlling cookies is available at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. Please note that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our Site.

When you visit our Site, we may also log your IP address, a unique identifier for your computer or other access device.

We may also include web beacons (also known as clear GIFs or web bugs) in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns. Our web beacons do not store additional information on your computer but, by communicating with our cookies on your computer, they can tell us when you have opened our email. If you object to web beacons, we recommend you follow the instructions for deleting existing cookies and disabling future cookies above.

On this website we use Sitestat, a product of Comscore, to measure and analyse information regarding visits to our Site. We use the services of Comscore in order to increase the efficiency of our Site.

To that effect, we use your IP address to collect, internet traffic data and data regarding your browser type and computer. We use the services of Comscore in order to increase the efficiency of our websites.

Hyperlinks

This website may contain hyperlinks or "links" to other Internet sites. These sites may have different privacy practices from our website. Our Privacy Policy applies solely to our site. Please review the online privacy statements of any other Internet sites you may visit.

An example of this is ShareThis that offers online services and applications that allow users to share content on the Web more easily. Please visit and read ShareThis Privacy Policy.

These links also do not imply an affiliation between Wesleyan Assurance Society and the site owner, or any endorsement, approval or verification of any content contained on other websites.

How do we use your information for marketing?

We may share your information with your consent to our business partners for marketing purposes or we may send you information about other organisations' products and services.  We may contact you by mail, telephone, fax, email or other electronic messaging service with offers of products, services or information that may be of interest to you. 

By providing us with your contact details you consent to being contacted by these methods for these purposes.  If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us or our business partners other than on the products and/or services which you have requested information about please indicate this when submitting your personal information or contact us on 0800 092 1990 Monday to Friday 8.30am to 6.30pm and Saturday 9.00am - 2.00pm.

We will not use the IP addresses or cookies to identify you personally.

How do we protect your information?

We take appropriate measures to ensure that the information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used.

Site messages are secure and not capable of being accessed by anyone other than an authorised member of staff. If you send us an email using your personal email account, remember that it will be "insecure" and could be intercepted. If you send us an "insecure" email, please keep the amount of confidential information you include to a minimum. We will do our best to do likewise when we reply.

We operate a content analysis system on all incoming emails. As a result, your email may be quarantined and/or deleted automatically. We apologise if this causes you any inconvenience. However, we hope that you will appreciate that we need to reduce spam and malicious email that may be received.

Other Information

You should note that if our business (or any part of it) is sold or transferred at any time, the information we hold may form part of the assets transferred although your personal information will still only be used in accordance with this policy.

We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions from this policy at any time so you are encouraged to review this policy from time to time.  We will, of course, notify you of any changes where we are required to do so.

You are entitled to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you (for which we may charge a small fee) and to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected.

For quality control and training purposes, we may monitor or record your communications with us.

When and how to contact us

If your personal information changes, if you change your mind about any of your marketing preferences or if you have any queries about how we use your information, please let us know by contacting us on 0800 092 1990 Monday to Friday 8.30am to 6.30pm and Saturday 9.00am - 2.00pm.