In this Privacy Policy, references to “we” or “us” are to Rooted Finance, a company incorporated under the Companies Act 2006 (registration number 7205478), a registered charity (reference number 1138351) authorized and registered with the
Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference 627716) whose registered office is at 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX.
We will at all times only collect and process your personal information in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016 and any other applicable data protection legislation.
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which may require a higher level of protection.
If you fail to provide personal data
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 provide you with advice and/or other services. In this case, we may have to cancel our service to you (and any agreement between us), but we will notify you of this at all times.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Data collection: Data collected may include names, addresses, date of birth, personal health information (subject to consent), details of income, national insurance, bank account details and/or any other information that we feel appropriate and reasonable to collect in order to offer our advice/services. All personal information is processed in accordance with the legal basis of consent.
Data storage: After a case/service is concluded we will keep your case files /details of service provided for 6 years in secure storage. You can access your information at any time and free of charge. If you would like to access your file please provide us with 28 days written notice. After the six-year period your file/data will be securely destroyed. Rooted Finance securely stores all personal data on an electronic database and uses this information in order to proceed a case.
Data sharing: We may also disclose your personal information to the Debt Free Advice partnership (legal entity Toynbee Hall), as is required in our contract with them to deliver free debt advice to end users.
Sharing aggregated or anonymised data: We may share aggregated or anonymised data within and outside of Rooted Finance. This may include anonymized data about your case such as reasons for financial difficulties, details of who is seeking debt advice, data to track and measure emerging trends. We share anonymised data with consultation work with our funders and partners.
Marketing: We may seek to contact you in future if/when we develop additional services that may be of use to you.
Quality standards: Rooted Finance is subject to quality assurance and regulatory audits conducted by our funders Money & Pension Services and the FCA (our service regulator). Our current auditors are Recognising Excellence LTD or other persons as may change from time to time. As part of these audits these organisations may wish to view the information we hold on you. These organisations are legally required to keep all personal information confidential and abide by data protection regulation.
Feedback: Rooted Finance or a third party (or platform such as Trustpilot) may contact you for service feedback as part of our review of our quality service standards and our commitment towards continuous improvement.
You have the following rights:
- You are able to withdraw any and/or all consent that you have provided at any time. You can do this either online through our contact form, by calling us on 0203 475 8811, sending an email to enquiries@rootedfinance.org.uk, or sending a letter to our registered office at: Rooted Finance, The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA or by approaching a member of staff. Please ensure that you detail which aspects of the consent you have provided you wish to update in your communication with us.
- You have the right to contact us in order to request a copy of the information we hold about you; to access, cancel or correct any information that we hold about you.
- You have the right to be forgotten, in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records, though if we have given you advice we will not be able to delete your data as we have a legitimate interest to retain this to evidence the quality of our advice if challenged by our regulator the FCA, or if challenged in court.
- You have the right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organization or to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes.
- You have the right to have your personal data corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- You have the right to prevent the processing of your personal data under specific circumstances.
- You have the right to object to direct marketing, processing of your data for research or statistical purposes, and processing of your personal data conducted on the legal basis of legitimate interest or the performance of a task in the public interest or exercise of official authority.
- You have the right to be informed of appropriate details regarding how your personal information is processed.
If you are not happy with how we have recorded or processed any of your data please tell us using any of the methods of communication noted above. You also have the right to direct a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Details of how to do this can be found on their website at: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.