Privacy

Data protection legislation (which includes the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR) places obligations on us Provident in relation to the way that we handle your personal information. We must process your information fairly and lawfully.  This also means you are entitled to know how we intend to use your information.  You can then decide whether or not you want to give it to us so that we can provide the product you require. All our employees are responsible for maintaining customer confidentiality.  We provide training to all our colleagues to remind them about their obligations. In addition our polices and procedures are regularly audited and reviewed.

Your information will be held by Provident which is a trading name of Provident Personal Credit Limited.  Provident Personal Credit is part of the  Provident Financial Group, which includes other lending companies such as Vanquis Bank Ltd and Moneybarn Ltd.  More information on the Provident Financial Group can be found at www.providentfinancial.com

Provident has a  Data Protection Officer to ensure that your personal data is being treated fairly and lawfully and protected at all times.  If you need to contact the DPO please email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to The Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084

We only collect the data we need to provide you with the product or service you require and to administer your account(s) with us. In most cases this will mean that we are processing personal data such as:

1. Information required on your application form such as name, address, income, outgoings etc.,

2. Information provided to us by the Credit reference agencies on your finance with other credit/lending organisations.

3. Any additional information you provide whilst we are administering your account such as income & outgoings and personal circumstances.

4. Information such as your bank account number, sort code and surname to collect outstanding payments or pay your loan into your account.

Your personal information will be held securely on Provident systems so that we and any other companies in our Group that you have dealings with either now or in the future can manage your relationship with us. This will include information you provide when you apply to us and any additional information provided by you or others in various ways, including but not limited to;

1. In applications, emails, letters, phone calls and conversations, when registering for services, in customer surveys, when you participate in competitions, through our websites and during conversations about your loan account.

2. From analysis of your payments and use of our services and others in the Group.

3. From information we receive from others such as credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies.

4. From agents and brokers.

5. From the use of data obtained from social media sites by matching email address with social media accounts.

6. From data broking services

As a business we use data we obtain from you and data we collect about you to perform a number of activities. Under data protection legislation we are only permitted to use your personal information when we have a legal basis that permits us to do so. We set out below an overview of the purposes for which we use your personal information and, in each case, the legal basis that permits us to use that information.

As mentioned above, Provident is part of a wider group of companies all offering different lending products. In most cases any data we and the other companies obtain are shared amongst each other to ensure that we are lending responsibly and that we have all the data available to manage your relationship with us in the most informed way.

The Provident Group companies as outlined above will share your information amongst each other for the following administrative activities where we have a legitimate business need;
a)Managing your relationship with each company and notifying you of any changes to those products and services.
b)Responding to your queries and complaints.
c) Administering offers, competitions and promotions so that you are provided with the most appropriate product or service enhancement for your needs.
d) Updating, consolidating and improving the accuracy of our records by sharing any updates to your personal data, for example if you change address.

In addition, we may share customer data for the following legitimate usage, either across companies in our group or with external suppliers;
e) Transactional analysis.
f) Arrears and debt recovery and debt sale activities including where we may need to trace your whereabouts.
g) Crime detection, prevention and prosecution.
h) To evaluate the effectiveness of marketing, and for market research and training.
i) To support customer modelling, statistical and trend analysis, with the aim of developing and improving products and services.
j)To enable assessment of lending risks by considering all products you have across the group of companies and also taking into consideration your payment history with any products you previously held for assessing your income and expenditure and periodically updating this information to enable us to make responsible lending decisions.
k) For direct marketing activities (see below).
l) We may share the following information with market research companies to help us understand how we can improve the products and services offered to you: Your name, address, telephone number, email address, gender, age and number of loans taken out with us. If you are contacted in relation to market research, taking part is completely voluntary.
m) Using your information for profiling to help ensure that if we market to you, this will be relevant to the information we hold about you.

Some of this sharing will be done on an individual basis, in other cases the data is shared using secure data transfer or is uploaded into a central database repository where we are able to apply strict controls over the security and access to the data. By sharing this information it enables our group companies to better understand your needs and run your account(s) responsibly and in the efficient way you expect.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. If you were introduced to us by a broker we will give them your contact details and sufficient information to help them with their accounting and administration. Brokers and Introducers sometimes use your information that you provided to them initially to contact you about products and services unless you have asked them directly not to do so.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. We may share your information with third party data broking services to help us enhance the data we hold on you. This data may be used for profiling, to ensure that the products we offer you are tailored better to your individual needs.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. Provident may in the future wish to sell, transfer or merge part or all of its business assets or to acquire a business. If so, we sometimes disclose your personal information to a potential buyer, merger partner or seller so long as they agree to keep it confidential and to use it only to consider the potential transaction.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. When a member of our team visits your property, or speaks to you over the phone, we may monitor or record the conversations we have with you in case we need to check we have carried out your instructions properly, to resolve queries or issues, to help improve our quality or service and to help prevent or detect fraud or other crimes. Sometimes these recordings may be used for staff training purposes. You have a right to ask for these recordings to be deleted, just let a member of our team know.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. Making sure we deliver excellent customer service is important to us and to do this various methods of communication may be used when sending you information about your account. Sometimes this may be by SMS or Email. For example this may include sending you reminders or receipts for payments or other information in relation to the administration/servicing of your loan. We will always ensure that we are not putting your data at risk.  If you have requested that we email you information relating to your account we will ensure that we have explained the risks of sending an insecure email and that you are happy to accept that risk. 

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. As part of our ongoing commitment to understanding our customers better, we value the opportunity to see the views and opinions made in relation to our business. We do this by scanning public and external websites, social media sites and related mobile apps to collate comments and opinions which may help us to improve our products and services. The majority of the information collated will be aggregated or anonymous.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. We may use your information to make sure we give you and other customers the best possible service. This could include where we need to perform testing on new and existing systems, are upgrading existing systems or for transactional analysis.

We will undertake this processing under a legitimate business interest. We will disclose your information to our agents for the purposes of them providing the collection, credit granting and account servicing you have requested.

We will treat your information as private and confidential, but may share it with other Group companies and only disclose it outside the Group if we are legally obliged to do so or required to do so to satisfy a court order. Examples of this are:

1. Passing information to HMRC (in the UK) and the revenue commissioners' (in the ROI) where a court order is in place.

2. Required by the Police/Garda and other law enforcement agencies to investigate or prevent crime.

3. Required by the authorities when we report on any suspicious activity that could indicate money laundering.

4.Undertaking affordability reviews , where we will use all the data across the group companies to ensure we are fully aware of your Group commitments.

5. Required to provide information to our industry regulators.

6. Required to undertake internal audit activities to examine and evaluate the effectiveness of our internal systems and controls.

We will undertake this processing to satisfy a legal obligation. Sometimes we will ask you to provide physical forms of identity when you take a product with us, this may include photo identification and a recorded video of yourself requesting a loan. Alternatively we may use information from the CRAs. This type of search is not seen or used by other lenders to assess your ability to obtain credit.

We will undertake this processing to satisfy a legal obligation. If you take out a Provident loan from 31st March 2018 onwards, we will send some of your personal and credit information to the Central Credit Register, to satisfy our obligations under the Credit Reporting Act 2013:

1. If you apply for a loan of €2000 or more we will share your Name, Address, Date of birth and Personal Public Service Number (PPSN), along with information about the credit application, such as product type and the amount of credit requested.

2. If you take out a loan of €500 or more we will share your Name, Address, Date of birth and Personal Public Service Number (PPSN), along with information about how you manage your account, including if you fail to make payments.

There are a number of activities that we will perform to either use your data to assess you for the product you have requested, to enable us to provide that product and to continue to administer it in line with the credit agreement you sign up to. Some examples of the contractual processing we undertake are;

1. Undertaking credit searches to assess your suitability for a product, see below for further details.

2. Assessing your application using an automated credit decisioning process, see below for further details.

3. Sending regulatory communications such as annual statements.4. Affordability, to assess your ability to sustainably repay your loan, we may review your Income and Expenditure levels, based on data we hold, capture or you provide.

5. We will share information such as your bank account number, sort code and surname with our payment software partners, Bottomline, to fulfil our contractual requirement to collect outstanding payments from you or to pay your loan into your account.

6. Recording the conversation we have with you when you apply for a new loan with us, to ensure we can evidence to our regulators that we are lending responsibly and in line with their requirements.

7. Collecting payments from you.

We will undertake this processing under a contractual requirement. When you apply for credit we use credit scoring. This is or can be an automated system that helps us to understand behaviour and its impact on an individual's likelihood to pay their loan/credit commitments. Credit scoring will take account of information you provide on your application, information already held in the Provident Group about you, data from Credit reference agencies, data obtained from social media sites. Our credit scoring processes are regularly reviewed to ensure they remain fair, effective and unbiased. If you submit an application and it is declined through this automated process, you can contact us to have the decision reviewed. If you need to contact us please email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084 and we will review your request and come back to you within 21 days.

There will be circumstances where we will only process your data if we have your consent to do so. For example, if you provide us with data that is classed as a special category of data such as health information, we will only process this with your permission (unless we feel the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests). You have a right at any time to ask us to stop the processing of that specific data.

We also seek your permission to use your data for direct marketing activities, see below for further details.

With your permission, we and other companies in the Provident Group may contact you by E mail, phone, SMS, and post/mail about products and services we feel will be of benefit to you including whether you are eligible for additional lending. This will include activities such as competitions and specific offers. This permission is collected from you at the time of your application but we may also contact/speak to you about your preferences through any of our ongoing contact with you when administering your account. We will not contact you about everything, only if we think it is appropriate and relevant to you. This contact may continue after your relationship with us ends and for a period of up to 2 years after you last had an active account with us. If you decide not to take out a loan with us after beginning an application, we may continue to contact you for a period of up to 6 months from the date you started your application. 

You may opt out of receiving this information at any time by calling 1800 553 084 or writing to us at customerservices@provident.co.uk or Suite 17, Block 1, Broomhall Business Park, Rathnew, Co. Wicklow.

As a customer if you decide to opt out of marketing, you'll still receive important information such as payment receipts, regulatory letters and statements.

Data Protection Legislation defines certain information as special categories (racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, sexual life, biometric and genetic data). As part of your ongoing relationship with us we may be provided with such information.  We will always ask your explicit consent to process this information (unless we feel the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests). We may share it with other parts of the Provident Group and our subcontractors to keep your records up to date.

Unless you have given us your consent, we will not provide information about you to other companies outside the Provident Group to use for their own marketing purposes.

Important please read:
You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. For example you can ask for a copy of your personal data through a Subject Access Request, you can ask for your information to be corrected if it is inaccurate, you can ask for the processing of your data to be restricted whilst we may be resolving an issue, you can ask for your data to be deleted, and you have the right to data portability. See below for further details. If you wish to exercise one of your rights please email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084 and we will review your request and come back to you within 30 days.

You have a right to object to any processing activity where the business states it has a legitimate business need to use your data in the way described. If you need to contact us please email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084 and we will review your request and come back to you within 30 days.

Data Protection legislation contains a right to data portability that may give you a right in some data processing contexts, to receive your personal data in a portable format when it is processed on certain grounds, such as consent. If you wish for this limited data to be "ported" to another organisation direct, please contact us at informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084 and we will review your request and come back to you within 30 days.

You have a right of access to a copy of the personal data we hold about you. Please email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to the Rights Request Team, Provident Personal Credit Limited, No 1 Godwin Street, Bradford, BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084  providing as much information as possible to enable us to locate your information. Once we have everything we need to locate your information we will supply this to you within 30 days of this date.

In line with the Licensed Moneylenders Regulations 2020, if we receive a request to access your personal data from an authorised third party, such as a lawyer or Claims Management Company, we will provide them with the information within 10 working days of a valid request being received. We will only supply them with your data if they can evidence that they are acting on your behalf and have your written authority to make the request.

We hope that we provide you with the service you expect in relation to how we manage your personal data . Please contact us if there is anything you are concerned about and we will endeavour to address this.  If  you are still not satisfied then you have the right to contact the Data Protection Commissioner at info@dataprotection.ie 

By visiting our websites, we may collect your IP address using cookies. Your IP address is a unique identifier for your computer or other access device. We do not use your IP address to identify you. Cookies are used to store small amounts of information on your device, which allows certain information from your web browser to be collected. We have a legitimate interest to use cookies for certain activities; other cookies will require your explicit consent. For further information in relation to these, please go to our Cookie Policy.

We use a number of third party companies to help us to manage your account and to deliver the service you expect. Examples of where we may employ the services of a third party are:

1. To help send out electronic, written or voice communications to you.

2. To provide IT support. 

3. To provide us with software and systems to help manage your account and the activities we need to complete. 

4. to help prevent fraudulent transactions or online security/fraud threats.

5. to help collect outstanding payments or pay your loan into your account.

6. To help process certain account activities such as arrears, collection and debt recovery.

7. To allow us to record some of the conversations that we will have with you.

8. To help us enhance the data we hold on you. Your information may be used for profiling, to ensure that the products we offer you are tailored better to your individual needs.

9. To help us understand how we can improve the products and services that we offer to you, we may use the services of external market research companies.

Provident will ensure that it and any third parties whom it engages to process Personal Data on its behalf will process the Personal Data in a manner that ensures appropriate security, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures. Provident will ensure that a written contract (a “Data Processor Agreement”) is put in place with third party processors and the terms of that Data Processor Agreement will comply with requirements of the Data Protection Legislation.

To help provide products and services to you, we use skills and technology within Provident Financial Management Services Limited (PFMSL). PFMSL is part of the Provident Financial Group and is based in the UK. All of its activities in relation to processing your Personal Data require compliance with data protection regulations.

Provident Personal Credit use PFMSL to process data on our behalf. This is done under a legitimate business need and is supported by a compliant data processing contract.

We sometimes use third parties based outside the European Economic Area (EEA). For example some of our IT administrative activities are supported by third parties based in India and Israel. Very occasionally, a Provident employee may also need to work outside of the EEA. Each processing activity is fully risk-assessed and we will always ensure they will protect your information to EU standards.

If we do transfer information outside of the EEA to one of our third parties, we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:

1. 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. 

2. 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.

Sometimes these organisations may disclose information to foreign authorities in the fight against crime and terrorism where they are legally obliged to do so.

As a regulated business we are often required to hold personal data for set periods of time. There may also be certain legal requirements to hold onto data. We have a legitimate business need to keep data for a certain period of time. We operate to an approved set of retention schedules which identify the type of data held and for how long. Some of the key retention periods are; 

1 .Most customer data will be held for up to 6 years after the end of the relationship.

2. Home visit recordings will be held for up to 6 years from the date of the recording.

3. Contact centre sales call recordings will be held for up to 6 years from the date of the recording.

4. All other contact centre call recordings will be held for up to 2 years from the date of the recording.

5. Marketing permissions will be kept and used for up to 2 years after the loan has been paid up.

If you require details on retention periods for any other type of data held please contact us on email informationrequests@provident.co.uk, write to Rights Request Team, 1 Godwin Street, Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 2SU, or call 1800 553 084

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This notice was last updated 03/03/2021.