Privacy Policy

How we use your Personal Information

This privacy notice is to let you know how we promise to look after your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn by having you as a customer and the choices you give us about what marketing you want us to send you. This notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Introduction

HMO Mortgage Limited is a commercial and residential property finance specialist broker. HMO Mortgage Limited is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and is the Data Controller of the information you provide. You can contact us for general data protection queries by email to admin@hmomortgages.co.uk, or in writing to the Data Protection Officer, HMO Mortgage Limited, 9 Copperhouse Court, Caldecotte, Milton Keynes, MK7 8NL.

How the Law Protects you

As well as our Privacy Policy, your privacy is protected by law. This section explains how it works.
Data Protection law says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside of HMO Mortgage Limited.
The law says we must have one or more of these reasons:

• To fulfil a contract we have with you, or
• When it is our legal duty, or
• When it is in our legitimate interest, or
• When you consent to it.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you.

Your Rights

Your personal data is protected by legal rights, which include your rights to:

• object to our processing of your personal data;
• request that your personal data is erased or corrected;
• request access to your personal data.

For more information or to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us using the contact details above.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/, which regulates the processing of personal data.

How we may use your Personal Information

We’ll use your personal information to manage our relationship with you or your business, develop new ways to provide service for our customers and to grow our business in an efficient and proper way, develop and carry out marketing activities and to study how our customers use services from us and manage our brands and services.

We’ll also use your personal information to manage how we work with other companies that provide services to us and our customers. This will be to:

• detect, investigate, report, and seek to prevent financial crime;
• manage risk for us, our customers and any of our partnering businesses;
• obey laws and regulations that apply to us;
• respond to complaints and seek to resolve them;
• exercise our rights set out in business agreements.

When we may use your Personal Information

We’ll use your personal information for fulfilling contracts and business agreements we have with you and for what we consider to be our legitimate interests or our legal duty. Legitimate reasons when we may use your personal information include maintaining our records and managing our relationship with you, our customer, including advising you of new products or key events in the products you already have through us. For anything else, we will only use your personal information with your consent.

What type of Personal Information we’ll gather

For us to be able to find the right product or service for you, we need to collect personal information about you and any co-directors should the borrowing be through a company. These will include (but are not limited to) your name, occupation, date of birth, contact details and financial details.
Additionally, we may need to collect sensitive personal data for some products or to comply with legislation. We will only collect and use these types of data if we are specifically required to:

• Racial or ethnic origin
• Religious or philosophical beliefs
• Genetic and bio-metric data
• Health data including gender
• Criminal convictions and offences

We will only collect the information we require to progress your case and only collect and process sensitive personal data where it is essential to finding the product you have requested. We will not explicitly request your consent to process this information as it is required by us to perform the service we have agreed to. If you do not want us to use and where necessary, share this information, we will be unable to help you.

Where we’ll gather your Personal Information from

The majority of your personal data we collect will come directly from you, from information you enter into our website, details of telephone calls, email correspondence and the completion of application forms. We gather data from devices you use to connect to those services, such as computers and mobile phones, using cookies and other internet tracking software. Additionally, when required we may collect personal information about you from external sources such as other brokers/financial advisers and credit reference agencies.

Who we’ll Share your Personal Information with

We will share your personal information with third parties such as lenders, to arrange the supply of services and products we have recommended. We may also share your personal information with other organisations when required, such as:

• Agents and advisers who we use to help run your accounts and services, collect what you owe and explore new ways of doing business
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities
• UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme
• Credit reference agencies
• Fraud prevention agencies
• Companies we have a joint venture or agreement to co-operate with
• Customer Feedback Service Companies
• Organisations that introduce you to us
• Companies that we introduce you to
• Companies you ask us to share your data with

In addition to the above, should we undergo a major company restructuring, then your data will be used by the new organisation in the same way as set out in this notice.

Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs)

We will carry out credit and identity checks when you apply for our services, whether as an individual or through a business. We may use Credit Reference Agencies to help us with this. Where we do, we will share your personal information with the CRAs and they will give us information about you. The data we exchange can include (but is not limited to:

• Name, address and date of birth
• Credit application
• Details of any shared credit
• Financial situation and history
• Public information, from sources such as the electoral register and Companies House.

We’ll use this data to:

• Make sure what you’ve told us is true and correct
• Help detect and prevent financial crime

When we ask CRAs about you or your business, they will note it on your credit file. This is called a credit search. Other lenders may see this and we may see credit searches from other lenders.

If you apply for a product with someone else, we will link your records with theirs. We will do the same if you tell us you have a spouse, partner or civil partner – or that you are in business with other partners or directors. You should tell them about this before you apply for a product or service. It is important that they know your records will be linked together and that credit searches may be made on them.

CRAs will also link your records together. These links will stay on your files unless one of you asks the CRAs to break the link. You will normally need to give proof that you no longer have a financial link with each other.

You can find out more about the CRAs on their websites, in the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice. This includes details about:

• Who they are
• Their role as fraud prevention agencies
• The data they hold and how they use it
• How they share personal information
• How long they can keep data
• Your data protection rights

Here are links to the information notice for each of the three main Credit Reference Agencies:

• Callcredit
• Equifax
• Experian

Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs)

Before we provide products, services or financing to you, we undertake checks for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, including verifying your identity. To do this, we may share your personal information with FPAs.
When we and fraud prevention agencies process your personal data, we do so on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, in order to protect our business and to comply with laws. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of the services and financing you have requested. When appropriate, we and fraud prevention agencies, may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.
Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years. A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the details above.

Data Transfers

Should a fraud prevention agency transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), they will impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing.

How we’ll keep your Personal Information Secure

We have strict procedures for how and where we store and share your personal data, that comply with industry practices, for both electronic and paper formats. We store all the information you give us and will use new information to update existing records we hold for you. All records (electronic and paper) are stored securely in a way that adheres to the principles of GDPR.

Sending Data Outside of the EEA

We will only send your data outside of the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) to comply with a legal duty. We do not transfer information to agents or advisers outside of the EEA, but if we should need to, we will ensure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:

• Transfer it to a non-EEA country with privacy laws that give the same protection as the EEA. Learn more on the European Commission Justice website.
• Put in place a contract with the recipient that means they must protect it to the same standards as the EEA. Read more about this here on the European Commission Justice website.

Marketing

We can only use your personal information to send you marketing messages if we have either your consent or a ‘legitimate interest’. A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information in a way that is fair and potentially beneficial to you.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time. If you change your mind you can update your choices at any time by contacting us.

How Long we Keep your Personal Information

We will keep your personal information whilst you are a customer of HMO Mortgage Limited. As a minimum, this will be for the period that you hold a mortgage that was sold by us. After you stop being a customer, we may keep your data for up to six years so that we can:

• Respond to any questions or complaints.
• Show that we treated you fairly.
• Maintain records according to rules and legislations that apply to us.

We may keep your data for longer than six years if we cannot delete it for legal, regulatory or technical reasons. We may also keep it for research or statistical purposes. If we do, we will make sure that your privacy is protected, and the data is only used for those purposes.

How to get a Copy of your Personal Information

You can access your personal information we hold by emailing us at admin@hmomortgages.co.uk. Alternatively, you can write to us at our registered address:

HMO Mortgage Limited, 9 Copperhouse Court, Caldecotte, Milton Keynes, MK7 8NL.

Letting us know if your Personal Information is Incorrect

You have the right to review any information we have about you and to ask us to correct anything that you think is wrong or incomplete. Please contact us as above if you want to do this. We will take reasonable steps to check its accuracy and correct it if it was wrong at the time of processing and to update your contact details if appropriate.

What if you want us to Stop using your Personal Information?

You have the right to object to our use of your personal information or to ask us to delete it if there is no need for us to keep it. This is known as the ‘right to object’ and ‘right to erasure’, or the ‘right to be forgotten’.

Please contact us as above if you wish us to delete your personal information. There may be legal or other official reasons why we are not able to, but we may be able to restrict its use. This means that it can only be used for certain things, such as legal claims or to exercise legal rights. We would not use or share your information in other ways whilst it is restricted.

You can ask us to restrict the use of your personal information if:

• It is not accurate.
• It has been used unlawfully but you don’t want us to delete it.
• It not relevant any more, but you want us to keep it for use in legal claims.
• You have already asked us to stop using your data but you are waiting for us to tell you if we are allowed to keep on using it.

How to Withdraw your Consent

You can withdraw your consent for us to use your personal data at any time. Please contact us if you want to do so. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. If this is so, we will tell you.

How to Complain

Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information. You can contact us by phone on 01908 597 811, via email to admin@hmomortgages.co.uk, or write to us directly to our address; HMO Mortgage Limited, 9 Copperhouse Court, Caldecotte, Milton Keynes, MK7 8NL. F

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern.

Future Formats for Sharing Data

You have the right to get your personal information from us in a format that can be easily re-used. You can also ask us to pass on your personal information in this format to other organisations.
We are working with our industry to improve the way your data is shared. We’ll update this notice if required with more details.