So, please read on for details of our commitment to you when it comes to protecting and safeguarding your personal details and information.
The Data Protection Act:
The Data Protection Act gives rights to individuals about whom information is recorded on computer or otherwise. You have the right to find out information about yourself upon payment of the appropriate fee, and challenge the accuracy if incorrect.
Confidentiality:
All your personal information will be treated as private and confidential, even when you are no longer a customer, except where disclosure is made at your request or with your consent in relation to arranging your mortgage.
Credit Reference Agencies:
Arranging your mortgage may include carrying out a credit search through a credit reference agency. With your permission, we and/or the lender will usually make the search on receipt of your application. The lender may also disclose certain information about your mortgage to credit reference agencies and to other lenders, if you have fallen behind with your payments, and have not made satisfactory proposals to the lender following a formal demand. Lenders must give you at least 28-days' notice of their intention to disclose.
Details of the Information collected, held and processed by Shire Direct:
Shire Direct collect information provided to us by you when you enquire about a service or product that we are able to offer or arrange via the enquiry / contact forms on this website, telephone enquiries, postal correspondence, or indeed upon formal application for services or products we are able to provide, as well as, but not limited to, newsletter subscription requests, promotional offers and competitions held through our website and / or other marketing formats.
Shire Direct are the sole owners of this collected information which is held on our secure computer systems which prevent unauthorised access by those not employed by Shire Direct. This information may also be held securely in printed format at our offices here in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire and accessed by authorised personnel only. This information may be used for the following purposes:
- To help us identify you when you contact us or when we contact you.
- To understand your financial circumstances, needs and requirements in order to identify products and services that we feel may be suitable and appropriate to you.
- To help us administer and contact you regarding any products or services provided to you previously, now or in the future.
- To contact you in any way where you have previously consented to allow us to do so with regards to our products and services.
- To carry out customer profiling and statistical reporting of our site visitors, customers, and potential customers for marketing purposes. Shire Direct make use of third party software, WebSTAT in order to help facilitate our customer profiling, statistical reporting and marketing analysis. We do not employ any other third party services to conduct this activity for us on our behalf, all our marketing analysis and statistical reporting is conducted 'in-house'.
- To help to detect and prevent fraudulent activity.
- To assist us in making decisions on any claim you may make.
Browser Information collected:
Shire Direct carefully analyse statistical data based on our visitors usage of our website on an on-going basis. This is done for marketing purposes so that we are continually able to improve the value of the materials available on our website, their ease of access, effectiveness and their marketing performance.
Server Web Logs:
We may keep server web logs of all activity conducted on our website in order to evaluate and assess the performance of our pages. These web logs are held securely in electronic form and contain details about usage of our website as well as details about the operating system, browser and Internet Protocol (IP) address being used to access our website as well as the referring site where appropriate - these details in themselves are not directly personally identifiable to you.
Online Statistical Analysis Software:
We use third party online statisical analysis software which tracks and collates information regarding the pages you visit on our website. This information may also include details about the operating system, browser and the IP address of the computer used to access our website and is held securely online (only accessible by authorised personnel at Shire Direct and also by authorised personnel at WebSTAT with regards to support services only), and may also be held in printed format in our offices. Additionally this information may include the Internet Service Provider (ISP) / organisation used to access our website through, as well as geographical information.
To help us evaluate and assess performance of our pages, we are sometimes able to marry this usage data to online enquiries or other forms submitted through our website based on the IP address of the form submission, and we do so wherever possible, in order to identify, for marketing purposes only, your site usage and referring site where appropriate. This 'married-up' data may be held on secure computer systems, or securely in printed form here at our Eastwood based offices.
Cookies:
The third party online statistical analysis software we use, WebSTAT, issues cookies, a tiny packet of data in .txt file format written to your computer by a web server, and read back by that same web server on subsequent visits to the site the cookie was issued from. WebSTAT uses sessional and permanent cookies to help track our visitor's traffic patterns through our site. Session cookies expire within a short period of time or when you close your web browser. Cookies are used in order to help track visitor's traffic
patterns to our site and analyse whether a user is a unique visitor or returning visitor, as well as gauge the duration since their last visit to our site and other visitor data. Cookies issued by WebStat do not contain any personally identifiable information and do not track any other sites you may visit subsequently.
Some people perceive the use of cookies to be intrusive to their privacy, so with most Internet browsers, you can usually block all cookies or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. It is also possible to delete all cookies from your computer's hard drive. If you wish to prevent the use of cookies on your computer please refer to your browser's help facility. You may be interested to know you can find further information regarding cookies and their usage at allaboutcookies.org.
Third Party Disclosure:
Shire Direct will only pass on your information to third parties under the following circumstances:
- If you have given your consent for us to do so.
- If the third party provides services or products in connection with our agreement with you, such as, but not limited to, a Lender or Credit Reference Agency.
- Where we are permitted or required to do so by law or for regulatory purposes.
- If the third party is a fraud detection / prevention agency.
- Where Shire Direct are unable to assist in arranging a service or product for you, we may pass on, with your consent, your enquiry / application details in their entirety to an alternative provider or their Agent.
- Where your application has been introduced to us by a third party such as another broker, we may disclose information with regards to the progress of your case on to them.
With the exception of the above circumstances Shire Direct will not sell, rent, share, trade or disclose any personal data it keeps relating to a data subject to any other parties without the prior consent of the relevant data subject.
Dealing with Others:
In exceptional circumstances we may deal with people who contact us on your behalf, such as family members, although we will not disclose to them any personal information we hold about you. If you would prefer us to deal only with you, please let us know. Where you give us information on behalf of someone else you confirm that they are aware of and accept our Privacy Policy.
Preventing Further Contact:
At Shire Direct we may maintain details regarding your enquiry / application on our secure computer systems to use for future marketing purposes. We or any third party such as another broker or lender connected with an enquiry or application submitted to Shire Direct may contact you via letter, e-mail, telephone, SMS or fax to offer products or services which we or they feel may be of interest to you.
If you do not wish to receive any further contact from Shire Direct, you may request that the details we hold are marked with a 'No Further Contact' flag so that no further marketing communications will be sent from Shire Direct unless you subsequently permit us to do so. To facilitate this you can either write to us with your name and address at:
- The Data Protection Officer
Shire Direct
Shire House
Coach Drive
Eastwood
Nottinghamshire
NG16 3DR
or alternatively you can send us an send us an email, including your full name, postal address, telephone number(s), and email address. In most instances we will usually be able to process your request within 48 hours of receipt, however please allow up to 30 working days to take effect.
Right to information:
Under the provisions of the Data Protection Act, you have the right to request a copy of any details held about you. We will provide this information in accordance with current legislative requirements, and on payment of the appropriate fee.
Links to other Websites:
There are a number of links through our website to other useful resources to be found elsewhere on the internet. Please take note that Shire Direct cannot take responsibility for the privacy practices of any external sites that may be linked to from this site, as well as sites that may link to us. If you are concerned about the privacy practices of other websites we recommend you read their own Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. This Privacy Policy statement relates solely to Shire Direct.
Changes to this Policy:
Shire Direct reserve the right to make changes to our privacy and data protection policies at any time without warning and without prior notification. Any changes made to these policies will be published here.
Should we make any changes to our Privacy Policy those changes will be posted here, and any other place we deem appropriate, so our users can be notified and made aware of how their information is collected, handled and processed. If we intend to use a user's information in a different way to that which was stated in this privacy policy at the time of collection then the said data subject shall be notified as to our intentions via e-mail, postal communication or telephone contact with the option to 'opt-out'. If a data subject has previously requested not to be contacted by Shire Direct again then they will not be contacted and neither will their personal information be used in this new manner.
Finally...
Shire Direct take great care when it comes to the issue of protecting and safeguarding your privacy both online and offline. To that end, any personal data held in databases or otherwise on our secure computer systems is firewalled and password protected and access is restricted, whether in electronic or print from, to Shire Direct employees only or those outlined in the third party disclosures section above, who need access to this information to undertake their duties. Authorised employees at Shire Direct are limited in number and are committed to our privacy and security policies. For your further protection, all Shire Direct employees are made aware of our security procedures upon employment, and our web security and data protection procedures
are reviewed on a regular basis.
If you have a question regarding our Data Protection handling procedures and/or this privacy policy then Shire Direct welcome your comments. Write to our Data Protection Officer at the above address, or submit feedback through our website, and we'll do our best to address your comments.
THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE
SECURING OTHER DEBTS AGAINST YOUR HOME.
YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED
IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON A MORTGAGE OR ANY OTHER DEBT SECURED ON IT.
Adding existing debt to your mortgage will increase the repayment term and overall cost.
