Our website privacy policy

This privacy policy sets out how My Mortgage Specialist uses and protects any information that you give. We adhere to the principles of the data protection legislation as set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The website is mymortgagespecialist.co.uk

We strongly believe in protecting visitors to our website and the information they provide to us. This privacy policy documents how we collect and process personal information from visitors to our website when operating and providing services. If you have any questions at all or would like to know more please do not hesitate to contact us via phone, email or contact form.

My Mortgage Specialist is a trading name of Flexible Finance (Midlands) Ltd and is registered in England under company number 08236476.

Why our privacy policy is important to you

During your dealings with us dealing with us, we will ask you to provide us with certain personal information including those relating to your financial and employment circumstances. This document helps you understand how we handle that data and your rights in relation to your personal data

This document is important as it allows us to explain to you what we will need to do with Your Personal Data, and the various rights you have in relation to Your Personal Data.

Your Personal data could include information such as your name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number, employment situation, and include any documents necessary for verification of your identity, income, health status, or any other details that could impact on a potential mortgage application.

How do we collect Your Personal Data?

We will collect and record Your Personal Data from a variety of sources, but mainly directly from you. You will usually provide information during the course of our initial enquiries, conversations or meetings. Information may have been provided verbally and in writing, including email.

We may also obtain some information from third parties, for example, credit checks, information from your employer, and searches of information in the public domain such as the voters roll. If we require to verify your credit status, we will only do this with consent from you.

In the course of handling Your Personal Data, we will:

• Record and store Your Personal Data in our paper files, mobile devices and on our computer systems. This information can only be accessed by employees and consultants within our Firm and only when it is necessary.
• Submit Your Personal Data to third parties essential in allowing us to progress any enquiry or application made on your behalf and to deal with any additional questions or administrative issues that lenders and providers may raise.
• Use Your Personal Data for the purposes of responding to any queries you may have in relation to any mortgage product you may take out, or to inform you of any developments in relation to those products.

How we handle your Personal Data

When we speak with you about your Mortgage requirements we do so on the basis that both parties are entering a contract for the supply of services. In order to arrange the products you require, we have the right to use Your Personal Data for the purposes of this.

The information on the site is not tailored advice to each individual reader, and as such does not constitute financial advice. All the mortgage advisors we work with are fully qualified to provide mortgage advice and are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The advisors will offer any advice specific to you and your needs. By making an enquiry you accept that your information will be passed to one of the specialists.

These specialists include:

• Mortgage and other financial, insurance and legal service providers.
• Third parties who can assist with your enquiry or application
• Credit Reference Agencies used to validate your identity, your credit history and your criminal records.

In each case, your Personal Data will only be shared for the purposes of progressing your enquiry and to provide you with our professional services. This sharing of Your Personal Data does not entitle such third parties to send you marketing or promotional messages.

We have the right to use Your Personal Data provided it is in our legitimate business interest to do so and your rights are not affected. For example, we may need to respond to requests from Compliance Service Providers relating to the advice we have given to you, or to make contact with you to seek feedback on the service you received. On occasion, we will use Your Personal Data for contractual responsibilities we may owe our regulator The Financial Conduct Authority.

Security and retention of Your Personal Data

We will take reasonable steps to properly safeguard Your Personal Data from unlawful access or use. We also expect you to take reasonable steps to safeguard your own privacy when transferring information to us, such as not sending confidential information over unprotected email, ensuring email attachments are password protected or encrypted and only using secure methods of postage when original documentation is being sent to us.

Your Personal Data will be retained by us either electronically or in paper format for a minimum of six years, or in instances whereby we have a legal right to such information we will retain records indefinitely.

Your rights in relation to Your Personal Data

You have the right to request access to and rectification or erasure of data, to object to and request the restriction of processing and to data portability.

You may ask us to provide you with the details of any personal information that we hold about you. Such requests should be sent to our Data Protection Officer. We will not charge any fee and we will respond within one calendar month. If we refuse a request, we will explain why and set out your rights to complain.

If you believe that any information we hold about you is incorrect or incomplete or you have any comments, queries or requests relating to the use of your personal information, please contact our Data Protection officer. Any information which is found to be incorrect will be promptly corrected.

You are able to:

• request copies of Your Personal Data that is under our control.
• ask us to further explain how we use Your Personal Data.
• ask us to correct, delete or require us to restrict or stop using Your Personal Data.
• ask us to send an electronic copy of Your Personal Data to another organisation should you wish.
• change the basis of any consent you may have provided to enable us to market to you in the future (including withdrawing any consent in its entirety).

How to contact us in relation to the use of Your Personal Data

If you have any questions or comments about this document or wish to make contact in order to exercise any of your rights set out within it please contact:

Aidan Comerford aidan@financeadvicecentre.co.uk

If we feel we have a legal right not to deal with your request, or to act in a different way to how you have requested, we will inform you of this at the time.

You should also make contact with us as soon as possible on you becoming aware of any unauthorised disclosure of Your Personal Data, so that we may investigate and fulfil our own regulatory obligations.

If you have any concerns or complaints as to how we have handled Your Personal Data you may lodge a complaint with the UK’s data protection regulator, the ICO, who can be contacted through their website at or by writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Use of cookies

During the course of any visit to our site, the pages you see, along with a short text file called a ‘cookie’, are downloaded to your computer. Many websites do this, because cookies help improve the user experience on the website, such as knowing whether the user has visited that website before.

We recommend that you leave all cookies enabled if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use. If you do not wish to accept cookies on to your machine you can disable them by adjusting the settings on your browser.

When you complete our enquiry forms, you pass data to us and cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence. In some special cases we use cookies provided by trusted third parties, for example, Google Analytics.

Changes

We will post any material changes that we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future on this page and, where appropriate, we will notify you of the change by email.