Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 14 November 2023

Summary

This privacy policy explains what information we gather about you when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from), or when you contact us by phone or email, and what we use that information for and who we give that information to. It also sets out your rights in relation to your information and who you can contact for more information or queries.

Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any queries with regard to our processing, please contact us at via the details provided in the “contact us” section at the end of this policy.

Information about us

In this privacy policy, references to “we“, “us“, “our” are references to The Housing Finance Corporation Limited, a registered society incorporated in England with limited liability (registered number IP25862R) and whose registered office is at 3rd Floor, 17 St. Swithin’s Lane, London EC4N 8AL. We are the “controller” and responsible for your personal data for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR, and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Collection of information about you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Information you give us. You may give us information about you by corresponding with us, for example, by phone, e-mail or otherwise. The information you give us may include your name, address, e-mail address and phone number.
• Technical information when you visit our website, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, geographical location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.

How we use your information

When you provide personal information to us, we may use it for any of the purposes described in this privacy policy or as stated at the point of collection (or as obvious from the context of collection), including:

• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;
• to notify you about changes to our service;
• to administer and protect our business and website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes; and
• to improve our website to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

Legal basis for processing your information

We rely on one or more of the following processing conditions in order to process your personal information:

• to perform our obligations under any contracts that have been agreed with you; or
• our legitimate interests in the effective delivery of information and services to you and in the effective and lawful operation of our businesses (provided these do not override your interests and fundamental rights);
• to satisfy any legal and regulatory obligations to which we are subject;
• where no other condition for processing is available, if you have agreed to us processing your personal information for the relevant purpose.

Sharing of information

We may disclose your personal information to our employees, officers or professional advisers as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

Your personal information may be transferred to third party service providers who process information on our behalf, including providers of information technology, identity management, website hosting and management, data analysis, data back-up, security and storage services.  The third party providers may use their own third party subcontractors that have access to personal data.

We may disclose your personal information to law enforcement, regulatory, or other government agencies or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with, applicable law or regulation. We also exchange information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We may share your personal information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiary undertakings, our parent undertaking and its subsidiary undertakings, as defined in section 1162 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We may transfer your personal data to countries or territories outside the European Economic Area (the EEA). Transfers outside the EEA will be only:

• to a recipient located in a country which provides an adequate level of protection for your personal information; and/or
• under an agreement or mechanism which satisfies UK and/or EU requirements (as applicable) for the transfer of personal data to data processors or data controllers outside the EEA, such as standard contractual clauses approved by the UK or the European Commission.

Retention of personal information

We will retain your personal information only for as long as it is required for the purposes for which it was collected, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Direct marketing and unsubscribing from marketing

Where we are legally required to obtain your consent to provide you with marketing materials, we will only provide you with such marketing materials if you have provided consent for us to do so.

If you want to unsubscribe from mailing lists or any marketing, you should look for and follow the instructions we have provided in the relevant communications to you.

If you do not wish to receive emails or marketing communications from us, you can at any time contact us to request that such communications cease.  If you choose to unsubscribe from any or all mailings, we may retain information sufficient to identify you so that we can honour your request.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing communications, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product/service experience or other transactions.

Rights in relation to your information

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

You may have certain rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. In particular, you may have a right to:

• request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

• withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information (to the extent such processing is based on consent and consent is the only permissible basis for processing.

If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us by sending an email or by one of the means set out at the end of this privacy policy. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Security of personal information

We have implemented appropriate standards of technology and operational security in order to protect personal information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal data, the transmission of data over the Internet (including by e-mail) is never completely secure. We endeavour to protect personal data, but we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to or by us.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies so that we can track how users navigate through our website, in order to enable us to evaluate and improve our website. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them please read our cookies policy.

Contact us

If you have any questions or complaints about this privacy policy or the way your personal information is processed, or would like to exercise one of your rights set out above, please contact us by one of the following means:

Email: offices@thfcorp.com

Post:

The Housing Finance Corporation Limited

3rd Floor, 17 St. Swithin’s Lane,

London, UK

EC4N 8AL

You may also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office. For further information on your rights and how to complain to the ICO please refer to the ICO website: https://ico.org.uk/.

Modifications

We may update this privacy policy at any time by publishing an updated version on our website. So you know when we make changes to this privacy policy, we will amend the revision date at the top of this page. The new modified or amended privacy policy will apply from that revision date. Therefore, we encourage you to review this privacy policy periodically to be informed about how we are protecting your information.