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Privacy policy

F&I Online Ltd trading as Carplus understands that your privacy is important to you and that you care about how your personal data is used and shared online. We respect and value the privacy of everyone who visits www.carplus.co.uk website (“Our Site”) and will only collect and use personal data in ways that are described here, and in a manner that is consistent with our obligations and your rights under the law.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and ensure that you understand it. Your acceptance of Our Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of Our Site. You will be required to read and accept this Privacy Policy when signing up for an Account. If you do not accept and agree with this Privacy Policy, you must stop using Our Site immediately.

1. Definitions and Interpretation

In this Policy, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

  • “Account” means an account required to access and/or use certain areas and features of Our Site;
  • “Cookie” means a small text file placed on your computer or device by Our Site when you visit certain parts of Our Site and/or when you use certain features of Our Site. Details of the Cookies used by Our Site are set out in section below;
  • “Cookie Law” means the relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as amended from time to time;
  • “Personal data” means any and all data that relates to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified from that data. In this case, it means personal data that you give to Us via Our Site. This definition shall, where applicable, incorporate the definitions provided in the EU Regulation 2016/679 — the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”); and
  • “We/Us/Our” means F&I Online Ltd trading as Carplus, a limited company registered in England under company number 09664343, whose registered address is Lumiere House, Elstree Way, Borehamwood, WD6 1JH.

This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of Our Site. Our Site may contain links to other websites. Please note that We have no control over how your data is collected, stored, or used by other websites and We advise you to check the privacy policies of any such websites before providing any data to them.

2. What information we collect

We may collect personal information (which means any information about an individual whose identity is apparent or can be reasonably ascertained from such information) from you in connection with a service or product provided to you by us, including:

  • Your name,
  • address,
  • telephone number,
  • email address,
  • date of birth,
  • employment details (including place of work and income),
  • details of expenditure,
  • passport information,
  • driving licence details,
  • bank details,
  • credit history,
  • insurance details,
  • information regarding your dependants,
  • IP addresses,
  • transaction and credit card information,

Where information fields are marked as mandatory on any application form that you complete, you will need to provide such information in order for us to continue with your application. Should you complete mandatory sections of the application form, but not complete the application, we may use the information provided to contact you to provide support with the application process.

3. How we collect your information

We may collect information provided inconnection with the following activities:

  • If you apply for or purchase any product or service from us;
  • Where you provide information to us on our Website, our mobile application, in writing, through social media, or over the phone (including via call recording);
  • If you register an interest in a job vacancy, or a product and/or service,
  • If you request information or assistance from us;
  • If you make a complaint;
  • Information provided to us from third parties including lenders, credit reference agencies, tax authorities, fraud prevention agencies, market information sharing databases, motor dealers, brokers and introducers; and
  • Use of the features of the Website or mobile application that may be offered from time to time, and may require such information in order to utilise

4. Use of your Information

  • to provide the product or service that you applied for;
  • to allow us to consider and process your application and/or enable a third party lender (from our carefully selected panel of lenders) to provide you with a suitable car finance product or service tailored to your need;
  • to confirm, update and improve our customer records;
  • to allow us to provide a quotation and process your application to enable a third party insurer to provide you with a suitable insurance product or service tailored to your individual needs;
  • to validate claims (i.e. to ensure that your account is not being used without your agreement) and to report on the performance of an account;
  • to troubleshoot problems with the Website or mobile application, or to customise your experience on the Website or mobile application;
  • to assess what forbearance options are appropriate if you are in financial difficulties;

Queries

  • to respond to any queries or complaints that you raise;
  • to inform you if an application you have started is incomplete;.
  • for training purposes and to enhance or review the service we provide or have provided to you;
  • to conduct statistical analysis and research (where possible using anonymised data);

Legal obligations

  • to prevent, investigate and prosecute crime, fraud and money laundering; for auditing purposes;
  • if we are obliged to disclose information by reason of any law, regulation or court order;
  • if we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the services and financing you have requested, or to employ you, or we may stop providing existing services to you;.
  • A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the detail

5. How we might share your information

The third parties with whom we may need to share personal information to help us provide services and products to you are detailed within this section.

Our partners, including brokers, introducers, lenders and motor dealers we work with depend upon your individual credit profile and the specific criteria determined by the lender.

  • AutoMoney
  • Oodle Car Finance
  • RateSetter
  • Specialist Motor Finance
  • Zopa
  • Close Brothers Motor Finance
  • Marsh Finance
  • V12 Vehicle Finance
  • Paragon Car Finance
  • Glenside Finance
  • Tandem Bank Limited t/a Tandem
  • Our subsidiaries or affiliates, for the purpose of managing our customer relationships, administering our business and to provide you with information about other products and services which might be of interest to you;
  • Service providers who need to know the information in order to provide us or you with a product or service (including our third party service providers who process information on our behalf to help run some of our internal business operations including email distribution, electronic signature processing, storage of customer documentation, our HR careers portal, IT services, customer services and for data analytics (using anonymised data));
  • Third party credit providers at your request where you have been unsuccessful in applying for personal lending services and/or product(s); in which case third party credit providers will become the relevant data controller;
  • Credit and fraud agencies (including Call Credit, Equifax, Experian and Cifas) to help make decisions.
  • Law enforcement bodies in order to comply with any legal obligation or court order.
  • Third parties for the purpose of validating and assessing fitness and propriety in connection with any application for employment.
  • Entities who may or do acquire any rights in us for the purpose of a business sale or reorganisation;
  • Occasionally, we may make your details available to reputable suppliers of credit and insurance related services that we feel may be of interest to you where you have agreed to receive such marketing.
  • Debt recovery agencies or service providers, tracing agents or investigators, solicitors or other agents for the purpose of collecting monies or assets due or outstanding on your account;
  • We reserve the right to sell performing and non performing accounts. We will inform you if we do this.

Credit checking and automated decision making

Whenever you apply for any of our products and/or services we and/or our lenders will carry out checks with credit reference agencies ("CRAs"), including-

  • Checks against publicly available information such as the Electoral Register, County Court Judgments (CCJs), bankruptcy or repossession information. These checks may be referred to as "soft searches" or "quotation searches" and are visible to only you;
  • Checks against data relating to your financial situation and financial history. These checks may be referred to as "hard searches" or "credit application searches" and may be visible to other third parties, such as potential lenders

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.

Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to "international frameworks" intended to enable secure data sharing.

6. Retention of your personal information

The personal information that you provide will be retained by us in accordance with applicable laws. However, in accordance with our lawful basis, data will only be retained in line with our stated policy approach and only be used for the purposes detailed, any marketing activity will only be undertaken where we have your consent, following the conclusion of your relationship or employment with Carplus or its subsidiaries and trading styles.

Our retention policies are aligned to individual rights and freedom and any request under those rights will be met in accordance with our stated lawful bases or obligations.

7. Sensitive personal data

Sensitive personal data includes information about an individual's health and other categories of personal information which are closely protected (e.g. criminal convictions). We do not generally process such information, unless you have voluntarily provided that information to us (for example, where you have notified us of a health issue).

You agree that, to the extent that you have provided us with sensitive personal data, you provided it voluntarily and agree that we can use any sensitive personal data that you provide us to deliver products or services to you and/or determine your fitness to avail yourself of our products or services. Where possible we shall seek to minimise the collection and use of such sensitive personal data.

8. Marketing

Where you tell us you are happy to receive information from us we may send you communications products that we perceive may be of interest to you (including in relation to products and/or services of our partners where we have your agreement).

Depending on the contact preferences you select, we will communicate with you by letter, telephone, SMS, email or other electronic means such as via social and digital media.

If, at any time, you prefer not to receive further communications from us in any or all forms (except in connection with information, products or services that you specifically request), you will have the ability to unsubscribe from such communications by means of a link provided in every email that is sent to you by us or by contacting us.

9. Keeping your information secure

We invest appropriate resources to protect your personal information, from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, in particular:

We review our information collection, storage and processing practices, including physical security measures, to guard against unauthorised access to systems.

We restrict access to personal information to Carplus employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us and who are subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations. They may be disciplined or their contract terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

We and the other companies processing your data for the purposes mentioned in Section 4 may from time to time need to undertake some of the processing in countries outside of the European Economic Area. Different privacy laws may apply in these countries and you understand and unambiguously agree to the transfer of personal information to these countries and parties. We only make these arrangements or transfers where we are satisfied that adequate levels of protection are in place to protect any information held in that country or that the service provider acts at all times in compliance with applicable privacy laws.

10. Cookies

Our website uses cookies (including Google Analytics cookies to obtain an overall view of visitor habits and visitor volumes to our Website). To view more information on what cookies we use and how we use them please review our separate Cookie Policy.

11. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time (for example, if the law changes). Any changes will be immediately posted on Our Site and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of Our Site following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.

12. How long will we store your personal information?

We will store your personal information for up to 12 months, we will store your personal information for six years from the point of last engagement with you. This is to enable us to refer to our records in the unlikely event that you want to lodge a complaint against us within six years.

If you do not exercise your right to object to marketing or unsubscribe to our marketing emails we will store your personal information for marketing purposes until you exercise your right to object or unsubscribe.

13. What are your rights in relation to your personal information

Right to access

You have the right to request copies of the personal information we hold about you at any time.

Right to rectification

You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate personal information we hold about you.

Right to erasure

You have the right to request that we delete your personal information from our records.

Please note that we will not be able to delete your personal information whilst we are still providing our services to you. We will be able to delete your personal information once you cancel the service or once the service is completed.

Right to restrict processing

You have the right to request that we restrict how we use your personal information.

Right to object

You have the right to object to the collection and use of your personal information at any time.

Right to data portability

You have the right to obtain a copy of your personal information in a legible and compatible format such as Excel or Word.

14. How can I exercise my rights in relation to my personal information?

You can exercise all your rights by contacting us on any of the above contact details.

15. How do I lodge a complaint about the use of my personal information?

You can lodge a complaint with us directly by contacting us on one of the above contact details.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO are the regulator who makes sure that we use your personal information in a lawful way.

You can lodge a complaint with the ICO by following this link https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or calling the ICO on 0303 123 1113.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, or you think we have incorrect information or you would like a copy of the information we hold about you, you may request details of personal information which we hold about you please do not hesitate to contact us via any of the below