Privacy and cookies policy
Data Protection
Collecting information and protecting your privacy. Our aim is to offer advice that helps you plan your financial future. To provide such advice, we need to know about your personal situation and your Adviser may request sensitive and private information about you, for example, your income, current financial arrangements, health, family commitments and any legal proceedings you may be involved in. Much of the information you provide will, as part of your application, be passed to the company whose products you apply for and details of how they use your information are included in their data protection literature.
If you are unable or unwilling to provide some, or all, of this information your Adviser will be unable to provide you with advice suitable for your circumstances. We do not collect personal information from third parties.
We are committed to protecting your privacy. As we would like you to be a lifetime client, we need to earn your trust and assure you that we will keep your personal information confidential and secure and only for as long as is necessary. The criteria we used to determine how long this period is can be obtained from Openwork’s Data Protection Officer at the address below.
We will use it with care and it will only be shared in the ways explained here, or if we are required to by Law or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Your personal information will only be held for as long as necessary and collected for the purposes of providing advice in respect of the range of products and services outlined in the Initial Disclosure Document or Client Proposition Brochure provided by your Adviser. In addition, we will make every effort to ensure that the information you provide is recorded accurately and that it is only passed to companies who comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). If it is required to send your information abroad, we will only do so to countries within the European Union (EU) or to a third country that the EU has determined provides an adequate level of protection and where you are able to exercise your rights to access your personal information under the GDPR.
Controlling and using your personal information
- We use your information in a variety of ways:
- To introduce you to a range of products and services offered by the companies we are associated with (or may be associated with in the future).
- To help with administration.
- To help with administration.
- To contact you with details of changes to products you have bought.
- For business analysis and research.
- For marketing products and services we think may be suitable for you (unless you ask us not to send you this information).
- To comply with the Law and/or FCA requirements.
- To verify your identity by searching publicly available records held by credit reference agencies.
- To prevent fraud and money laundering we may pass your details to other companies, public bodies including the police or to an insurer’s database. Insurance companies can search databases for any relevant information that exists about you.
- We therefore process your data because it is necessary for:
- The performance of a contract to which you are a party.
- Compliance with legal obligations to which we as the controller are subject.
- None of the information gathered about you will be used in automatic decision making.
Your health details
If you apply for some types of insurance (eg. life insurance, pensions, sickness etc.) you will be required to provide details of your health. Under the GDPR, this is regarded as sensitive personal data.
Your Adviser will have access to your medical details unless you prefer to complete a medical statement of health in private. If this is the case, please send it with your application marked for the attention of the “Consultant Medical Officer” in a sealed envelope.
We do need your explicit consent to collect and process your health details, which of course you may withdraw at any time.
Mortgage credit checking
Marketing and sharing your information
The information you give us will be added to any other details we hold about you. Openwork will never sell your details to a third party, but we may share your information with carefully selected companies we are associated with. Therefore, we (or they) may contact you (by post, email, telephone or other appropriate means) to tell you about products, services or offers we believe may interest you. The products and services may not be related to financial services. You can ask us not to contact you for this reason, at any time, by writing to us at our Head Office. This will not affect your relationship with your Adviser.
We may have to pass your details to another Adviser if, for example your Adviser is ill or you need of advice in a different product area. If your Adviser leaves we may pass your details to another Adviser so that we can continue to provide you with a high standard of service.
We may send your information to third parties that are carrying out work on our behalf.
Your Data Protection rights
- You have certain rights under the GDPR. These include the right to:
- Ask for a free copy of your personal information in a portable format.
- Stop us sending you marketing material about products and services.
- Have any incorrect information we hold about you corrected.
- Ask us to restrict processing of your personal data.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we put on your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.
The cookies we use are ‘analytical’ cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.