This Privacy and Data Policy deals with how we and others may use your data and contact you

How do we handle your personal information?

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• not hold more information about you than is required for the purposes for which it is being processed
• reasonable endeavours to ensure that any information about you is accurate and kept up to date
• not keep your information for longer that is necessary or as required by law
• process your information in accordance with your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998

Recording of Calls

Telephone calls with us will be recorded for training and quality purposes. We engage third parties to carry out quality and compliance monitoring on our behalf and customer data including recorded calls is made available to such third parties for this purpose.

Cookie policy

Cookies work by putting a small bit of information onto the device you are using to access our website. We use cookies for a number of things. If you would like to read about them in more detail please see our Full Cookie Policy on our website where we have listed which cookies we use, and how to remove them from your device.

What information do we hold and how do we obtain it?

We may receive information about you from any of the following sources:

• directly from you or your authorised representatives when you or your representative obtains a quote, incepting, renewing or amending a policy or making a claim (e.g. personal details, claims details, etc)
• from third parties such as credit reference or debt collection agencies (e.g. your credit rating)
• from insurers, witnesses, third parties and solicitors (e.g. accident details).

What do we use your information for and who do we disclose it to?

We will use the information about you for the following purposes:

• to administer and maintain your insurances
• to assist you with claims and enquiries
• to maintain your insurance records with insurers
• to tell you about other insurance and related products and offers from Swinton and selected third parties (see below)
• to share with other carefully selected parties for these purposes.
• to enable us to conduct research and statistical analysis, and facilitate our quality and compliance monitoring

In addition your information may be disclosed to:

• the police in response to a request
• other bodies in response to legislative/court orders.

You should also be aware that:

We and most of the insurers we deal with have a sharing of information agreement to prevent fraud. Whenever you arrange your insurance through us, this will be on the basis that you agree to your claims information being passed onto the Claim Underwriting Exchange. To help prevent fraudulent claims, we and your insurer exchange information with other insurers through various databases. Also to help detect people who break the law by not having insurance, your insurer will supply details of your motor insurance to a database which can be accessed by the police or other insurers.

Credit and Other Searches

In assessing your application/renewal and providing you with a quote we and your insurer will carry out the following searches:

• we will validate your name and address details with a credit and fraud prevention agency who will search public records such as the register of County Court Judgments, the Electoral Register and Bankruptcy records. A record of these searches will not be visible to other lenders when they carry out future credit checks; and
• if you consent, we, or the relevant insurer will search files made available by credit reference agencies. A record of this search will be visible to other lenders when they carry out future credit checks. We, or the relevant insurer may also pass to credit reference agencies information we (or the relevant insurer ) hold about you and your payment record. Credit reference agencies share information with other organisations, enabling applications for financial products to be assessed or to assist the tracing of debtors, or to prevent fraud. The relevant insurer may ask credit reference agencies to provide a credit scoring computation. Credit scoring uses a number of factors to work out risks involved in any application. A score is given to each factor and a total score obtained and this together with other factors would be used to accept or reject any application for credit to the relevant insurer.

What are your rights?

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 you have certain rights in relation to the information we hold about you:

You may request, by writing to the address below and enclosing a cheque for £10 payable to Swinton Group Limited, details of the information that we hold about you. Details will be provided to you within 40 days of us receiving your request and fee

Contact/address details

Customer Assistance, Swinton Group Limited, Swinton House, 6 Great Marlborough Street, Manchester, M1 5SW.

Contacting you

We will contact you to tell you about insurance and related products, offers and discounts from Swinton and from selected third parties, , such as motor, home and travel insurance, life cover, and other financial products such as credit, loan and mortgage facilities and protection, investments, savings and home protection products. We may contact you about these from time to time mainly verbally by telephone, or by mail, text, email and other reasonable methods, using the telephone and other contact details provided and updated by you and your representatives or which we obtain or update from external sources. This may include telephone numbers which are registered by you or others with the Telephone Preference Service unless you have told us directly that you do not wish to be contacted for this purpose on a particular telephone number. We may also pass this information (except telephone numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service) to other carefully selected third parties so they can contact you in the same ways. Please let us know if you do not want us to do this. You can change your preference at any time by writing to us.

To change your marketing preferences with Swinton, you will need to contact your local branch or write to us.