Privacy Policy

Credit and Surety Brokers Limited
Office suite G426, G Mill
Dean Clough
Halifax
HX3 5AX

Credit and Surety Brokers Limited is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC110811.

https://creditandsuretybrokers.com/

This privacy notice sets out how we collect and process your personal data, and provides information legally required, including about your rights.

It relates to personal information that identifies you as a natural person — whether you're an actual or prospective client, a contact at a client, insurer or supplier, an individual who browses our website, or anyone else we interact with. We refer to this throughout as "personal data" or "personal information".

This notice may change from time to time; the version published on our website is the current one.

For the purposes of UK data protection law, we are a controller of your personal data. As a controller, we use (or "process") the personal data we hold about you in accordance with this notice.

The personal information we collect varies depending on how you interact with us, and may include:

• Contact details: such as your name, email address, postal address and phone number.
• Identification details: for anti-money laundering and know-your-customer checks, such as your date of birth, identification numbers (e.g. passport or driving licence number), and proof of address.
• Business contact information: such as your job title, employer, business address, business email and business phone number, where we deal with you as a contact at a client, insurer or supplier.
• Financial information: such as your (or your business's) trade credit exposure, turnover, credit history, and bank account details, only as necessary to arrange and administer your cover.
• Claims details: information about current and previous credit insurance or surety claims, including claims under other, unrelated policies.
• Background checking information: such as sanctions list checks, politically exposed person (PEP) status, and confirmation of a clean criminal record, carried out only where relevant to the insurance or surety cover requested and, where required, with your consent.
• Marketing and communications preferences: such as your preferred topics and how you'd like us to contact you.
• Payment information: such as bank account or payment card details, to collect premiums or make claim payments.
• Online information: such as device, browser and connection information, and data collected when you use our website (see "Automated collection of information" below).
• Comments and feedback: such as messages you send us, and any feedback you give us about our service.

We only collect special categories of data (such as criminal offence data gathered during background checks) to the extent necessary to provide our services and where permitted by law. Where the law requires your explicit consent for this, we'll ask for it separately.

If you give us personal information about someone else (for example, a co-director or beneficiary), you're responsible for the accuracy of that information and for telling them we'll process it in line with this notice.

When you browse our website, we may automatically collect technical information such as your device and browser type, IP address, the date and time you visited, and the site you came from, to help the website run properly and to understand how it's used.

We use one strictly necessary item, which remembers your cookie choice, and, only if you accept them, Google Analytics cookies to help us understand how the website is used. We list them in our Cookie Policy. For anything beyond strictly necessary cookies, we ask for your consent through a cookie banner before they're set, in line with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

We may collect personal information about you from:

• Directly from you — when you contact us, request a quote, or become a client.
• From your employer or business — where we deal with you as a contact at a client, insurer or supplier.
• From insurers and other intermediaries — in the course of arranging or administering your cover, or handling a claim.
• From credit reference and sanctions-screening agencies — to help assess risk, verify identity, and meet our anti-money laundering obligations. A search may appear on a credit file whether or not the application proceeds.
• From publicly available sources — such as Companies House and other public registers.

We rely on the following legal grounds, as applicable:

• Contract — where processing is necessary to arrange, place or administer your insurance or surety cover, or to perform a contract with you.
• Legal obligation — where we need to comply with the law, including anti-money laundering and FCA regulatory requirements.
• Legitimate interests — where necessary to run our business, such as managing our relationship with clients, insurers and suppliers, keeping accurate records, and improving our service, in a way that doesn't override your own rights and interests.
• Consent — where none of the above applies, or the law requires it (for example, some marketing, and some special category data).

Special categories of data and criminal convictions. Where we collect information such as criminal offence data as part of sanctions or background checks, our lawful basis is that this is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest relating to insurance purposes — meaning advising on, arranging or administering an insurance or surety contract, or a related claim.

Sharing your information. We may share your personal data with:

• The insurers, reinsurers, and other intermediaries we use to arrange, place and administer your cover.
• Firms that provide services to us or on our behalf, such as our CRM, IT, hosting and payment providers.
• Regulators and other bodies with a role laid down in law, such as the FCA.
• Fraud prevention and sanctions-screening agencies, and credit reference agencies, to check information and prevent fraud — this may appear on a credit file.
• Other organisations where we're permitted or required to disclose information by law, for example a valid request from law enforcement.
• A buyer, if our business (or part of it) is sold or transferred, so your cover can continue to be serviced.

We only share your data outside the UK where an adequate level of protection is in place, as required by data protection law.

You're not obliged to give us your personal information, but if you don't, we may not be able to provide our services to you.

We keep your personal information only for as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected, and to meet our legal, regulatory and record-keeping obligations.

You have the right to:

• Ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate information, or delete information we no longer need.
• Restrict or object to how we use your personal information.
• Receive your data in a portable format, where our processing is automated and based on your consent or a contract with you.
• Object to a decision made about you by automated means alone, including profiling used by insurers when underwriting.
• Withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it — this won't affect anything we did with your data before you withdrew it.

In some cases, we may not be able to action a request — for example, where we have a legal or regulatory obligation to keep the information. If so, we'll explain why.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk (opens in a new tab) or on 0303 123 1113.

To exercise any of these rights, or with any questions about this notice, contact us at enquiries@creditandsuretybrokers.com

We may use your personal data to tell you about products and services that may interest you, and to keep you informed about credit insurance, surety and industry news and any offers we run. Our lawful basis for this is our legitimate interest in keeping in touch with clients and contacts, unless we've asked for your consent instead.

We may contact you by post, phone or email. You can opt out of marketing at any time — this won't affect us contacting you about a service you've specifically asked for.

Enquiry form. If you send us an enquiry through our website, we collect the details you enter: your name, company, email address, phone number (if you give one), the service you need and your message. We email them to our enquiries mailbox so that we can reply, and we email you a message to confirm we've received your enquiry. We use these details to respond to your enquiry and, if you become a client, as described elsewhere in this notice.

Keeping the forms safe. To stop the enquiry form being misused, we check how quickly it is sent and limit how often one internet address (IP address) can send it.

Services that handle your information. We use the following services to run our website. They handle information on our behalf. We only share your data outside the UK where an adequate level of protection is in place (see section 6).

• Lovable (website hosting and sending of the form emails). Lovable keeps a log of the email addresses that form emails are sent to, with the time and whether they were delivered. This includes the email address of anyone who sends an enquiry, because they get an automatic reply. If the site hits an error, Lovable's error monitoring also receives technical details of the error and the page address (no names or other personal details).
• Google Analytics (website statistics, only if you accept analytics cookies): provided by Google, which may process data outside the UK. See our Cookie Policy.