Your privacy is really important, which is why protecting your personal data is our top priority. This Privacy Policy explains how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from), your privacy rights, and how the law protects you.
It's important to know who's handling your data. Here we set out who we are, why we have this policy in place, and how you can get in touch with us if you have any questions or would like to talk to us about your data.
At Selina, we take your personal data seriously. This policy:
We collect the information necessary to be able to assess whether you are eligible to use our product, to determine the terms corresponding to your risk profile and to deliver our product/services to you. The information we need to do this includes:
We use your personal data to:
How long we keep your information will depend on the purpose for which we use it. While you are a customer of ours, we will only retain your information for as long as is necessary for those purposes.
In accordance with our data retention policy, we will retain your personal information for a minimum of six years from the end of our business relationship with you. Our business relationship will be deemed to be at an end on the date upon which your account is closed (which will either be when all outstanding sums under the agreement have been repaid or when we stop pursuing arrears on the account) or when your application has been declined.
Please note that if your personal information is shared with third parties, they may have different retention policies. Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time; if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, note that your data can be held by them for up to six years.
After termination of your loan contract, we may continue to use anonymised data (which does not identify individuals) which is aggregated with anonymised data of other individuals. We use this aggregated anonymised data for data analysis, profiling and research purposes, for example to gain insights about our customers.
Who do we share your personal data with?
Your personal data may be shared with credit scoring agencies, solicitors, surveyors, fraud prevention agencies and government agencies (for more detail, see ‘Credit scoring agencies, fraud prevention agencies and government agencies’ below). We will also share your personal data with the land registry in order to establish the charge over your property.
If you make an application to use our services, we will obtain on your behalf copies of your credit report and credit score from designated credit scoring agencies. In order to provide these services to you, we will share your information with such credit scoring agencies. Credit scoring agencies collect and maintain information about consumers’ and businesses’ credit behaviour. This includes fraud prevention, and credit information (including details of previous applications and the conduct of your bank accounts) and publically accessible information such as information from the Electoral Register, County Court Judgements, decrees, and bankruptcies. Credit scoring agencies may form a link between any previous or subsequent names that you use in the records they hold about you.
Provide to credit reference agencies about you, your financial associates (individuals you have made a joint application with or are otherwise linked to your credit history) and your business (if you have one) may be provided to other organisations. This information is used by them and us to:
We also have processes and systems that protect our customers and ourselves against fraud and other crime. We will share your personal information with fraud prevention agencies and government agencies in order to help us to identify instances of fraud and trace those responsible. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details of this fraud will be passed to these agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information.
Other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:
We and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies.
We need you to give us the information you provide, and which we collect about you from the credit scoring agencies or other third parties, in order for us to provide you with our services as agreed in our contract with you. We cannot provide our services to you without collecting the information you give us when you register with us because we need certain information from you to be able to assess your suitability for the financial products and services we provide.
For other kinds of information we process (such as from the land registry or individual home appraisals), this is necessary in pursuit of our legitimate interests in establishing a charge over your property or adequately assessing your risk profile and property value.
While there are some risks with this type of activity, on balance, we consider the risk to your rights of data protection is outweighed by the significant benefits in being able to provide you with 1) a fair rate and maximum loan amount accessible 2) the best customer service possible and 3) with a product that is suitable for your needs.
We’ve also implemented protections for your rights by establishing adequate cyber security in order to protect your data privacy.
You have the right to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, at any time to the processing of your personal data which is based on our legitimate interests. More information on this right and on how to exercise it is set out in ‘What rights do you have in relation to the personal data we hold on you?’ below.
We may also use your personal data to comply with our legal obligations, including our obligations to regulators.
We will always seek your consent to process certain types of information where we are legally required to do so such as Marketing but may also rely upon legitimate interest for Direct marketing where we can reasonably show the product or services may be of interest to you.
What happens if you do not provide us with the information we request or ask that we stop processing your information?
If you do not provide the personal data necessary, or (where we are relying on your consent) if you withdraw your consent for the processing of your personal data, we may not be able to provide you with our products or services.
We use an automated decision-making system to perform credit scoring/property value assessment activities and make determinations concerning your suitability for certain financial products and services.
We do so by using an automated decision-making system to verify the financial details you provide us against those held by third-party providers, as well as to benchmark with our risk
scoring guidelines. If you do not pass the check using the automated system, we cannot provide our goods or services to you without being able to verify your identity.
Moreover, using an automated decision-making system enables us to provide you with the fairest rate possible, as well as minimize the risk to grant you a loan for which you are possibly not eligible.
You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which has legal consequences for you or similarly significant effects. While we are confident that the technology works, we understand that not everyone is comfortable with decisions being left entirely up to machines. If you have any questions about our identity checking system, please contact us on dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk or +44 20 8133 0157.
We may use cookies and similar technologies on our websites and in our emails. A ‘cookie’ is a small text file sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser. Upon visiting a site that uses cookies, a cookie is downloaded onto your computer or mobile device. The next time you visit that site, your device will remember useful information such as preferences, visited pages or logging in options.
Cookies are widely used to add functionality to websites, or to ensure they work more efficiently. Our site relies on cookies to optimise the user experience and ensure the site's services function properly.
We may use third party marketing cookies to help deliver advertising relevant to your interests. These include:
Most web browsers allow some control to restrict or block cookies through the browser settings, however if you disable cookies you may find this affects your ability to use certain parts of our website or services.
For more information about cookies please visit https://www.aboutcookies.org.
We use third party processors to provide our services; these companies will process or store your information on our behalf. Here are some of the third parties we use, for a full list please contact us:
Your personal data may be processed in the USA by us or the third parties we use. Where these transfers outside the EU take place, we will ensure the same high standard of protection for your personal data at all times.
1. The right to be informed
You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we’re providing you with the information in this Policy.
2. The right of access
You have the right to obtain access to your information (if we’re processing it), and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Policy).
This is so you’re aware and can check that we’re using your information in accordance with data protection law.
3. The right to rectification
You are entitled to have your information corrected if it’s inaccurate or incomplete.
4. The right to erasure
This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there’s no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions.
5. The right to restrict processing
You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your information. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for further use of their information to be ‘blocked’ to make sure the restriction is respected in future.
6. The right to data portability
You have rights to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. For example, if you decide to switch to a new provider, this enables you to move, copy or transfer your information easily between our IT systems and theirs safely and securely, without affecting its usability.
7. The right to object to processing
You have the right to object to certain types of processing, including processing for direct marketing (i.e. if you no longer want to be contacted with potential opportunities).
8. The right to lodge a complaint
You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your personal data with your national data protection regulator. The contact details for the UK Information Commissioner’s Office is provided below.
9. The right to withdraw consent
If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal data with your consent up to that point is unlawful). This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal data for marketing purposes.
We act on all requests within 30 days, and provide the information free of charge, however we may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs of providing the information for:
baseless or excessive/repeated requests, or further copies of the same information.
Alternatively, we may be entitled to refuse to act on the request.
Please consider your request responsibly before submitting it. We’ll respond as soon as we can. Generally, this will be within one month from when we receive your request but, if the request is going to take longer to deal with, we’ll come back to you and let you know.
We may contact you by phone, email, postal mail or through our mobile application. If you prefer a particular contact means over another please just let us know.
Where you have consented we may send you messages by post, telephone, text, email and other digital methods (including new methods that may become available in the future) about products and services which may be of interest to you – these are marketing messages. You can ask us to stop or start sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us or using the opt in or out links in our emails.
Where we make any significant changes to this privacy notice, we will contact you to ensure that you are aware of the changes. We may also make minor updates to this privacy notice without notifying you but will ensure that the updated version is available online.
Selina Finance Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data and this website (we use "Selina", "we", "us" or "our" in this Privacy Policy). You can get in touch with us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, at:
Selina Finance Ltd, 14 Hanway Place, London, W1T 1HD, Email address: dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk, Telephone number: 020 3984 8578.
We are Selina Finance Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 11497606. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), under firm reference number 820183. You can check this on the Financial Services Register by visiting the FCA website.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK independent supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).
We'd always appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO however, so please contact us in the first instance.
This version was last updated in February 2021, and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us, dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk.
It's important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
