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.

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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 use to determine how long this period is can be obtained from Openwork’s Data Protection Officer at the address below.

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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).

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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.

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Controlling and using your personal information

A Data Controller is someone who determines the purposes for and the manner in which your personal data should be processed. The Openwork Partnership, its Appointed Representatives and the companies whose products clients buy are all Data Controllers.

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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 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.

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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.

 

Marketing and sharing your information

The information you give us will be added to any other details we hold about you. The Openwork Partnership 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 Swindon Office..

 

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.

 

As the processing of your personal information is necessary for a legal obligation placed upon us by the FCA and may be required for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, we will not be able to permanently delete your personal information until the end of the period we have deemed necessary.

 

How to get more information

If you would like further details on how we use your personal information or if you have any data protection queries, please write to:

 

The Data Protection Officer

The Openwork Partnership

Washington House

Lydiard Fields

Swindon

SN5 8UB

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You may receive more information about data protection from the companies that we have introduced you to.

 

We may record telephone calls so we can check we have acted on your instructions correctly and to ensure we are giving you appropriate service. We may also monitor calls for security and training purposes.

 

Complaints

If you have any complaints about the way we or your Adviser have handled your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer at the address given above.

 

You also have the right to refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner.

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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.

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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.

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You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.