Archives: FAQ - Savings

We will generally collect your personal information from you directly. If you are introduced to us by a broker or other intermediary, we will obtain some personal information about you indirectly from them when they introduce you to us.

In addition, we obtain your personal information from other sources such as someone with authority to deal with your financial affairs, fraud prevention agencies, credit reference agencies, your employer, your landlord, other lenders, HMRC, the Department for Work and Pensions, publicly available directories and information (e.g. telephone directory, social media, internet, news articles, Charity Commission, Scottish Charity Regulator), debt recovery and/or tracing agents, other organisations to assist in prevention and detection of crime, police and law enforcement agencies.

Some of the personal information obtained from credit reference agencies will have originated from publicly accessible sources. In particular, credit reference agencies draw on court decisions, bankruptcy registers and the electoral register (also known as the electoral roll). We explain more about credit reference agencies below. We have also mentioned above in the lists of personal information that we process some of the CRAs’ other sources of information (which are our own source of information too).

If you make a joint application (e.g. with your spouse, partner or family member), we will also collect the personal information mentioned above about that person. If you look now at the ‘What are the legal grounds’ section (below) you will see reference to consent and a description of some limited scenarios where it may be relevant to what we do with personal information. If we ask you to obtain consent from the joint applicant (such as for marketing) you should do that using the consent capture mechanism that we give or make available to you on the application form for that purpose.

If there is somebody who has authority to deal with your affairs, that person will see this privacy notice when we make contact with him/her directly.

This includes:

• Your debit card details to process your initial deposit (where you apply for your savings account online);
• Where a person other than the savings account holder makes a withdrawal from the account, information about that person and the transaction;
• Where a withdrawal is made to another person, information about that person and the transaction;
• Information about your tax position including citizenship, tax residency and Tax Identification Number (where applicable); and
• Information relating to transactions, i.e. source of funds for deposits and purpose of withdrawals.

This includes:

• Your financial details e.g. your salary and details of other income, other assets and investments, details of your savings, details of your expenditure, and details of account(s) held with other providers if you pay your mortgage from those account(s);
• Details of your existing borrowings and loans;
• Personal information about you and your credit history which we obtain from credit reference agencies including data which originates from Royal Mail (UK postal addresses), local authorities (electoral roll), the insolvency service, Companies House, other lenders and providers of credit (who supply data to the CRAs) and court judgments, decrees and administration orders made publicly available through statutory public registers (see the ‘How do we share your information with fraud prevention agencies?’ section below);
• Information about your employment status including length of service and background, skills and experience, whether you are employed, self‑employed, retired or receive benefits;
• Information about any external directorships or trustee roles that you hold;
• Information about your occupier status, such as whether you are a tenant including landlord name and address (if applicable), live with parents or are an owner occupier of the property in which you live at the time of your application;
• Information which is relevant for your residency and/or citizenship status, such as your nationality, your length of residency in the UK and/or whether you have the permanent right to reside in the UK;
• Your marital status, family, lifestyle or social circumstances if relevant to the mortgage product (e.g. the number of dependents you have and their ages); and
• Source of funds for any over payments.

This includes:

• Your title, full name, any previous names (where applicable) and your contact details, including for instance your email address and contact numbers;
• Your home address, correspondence address (where different from your home address) and address history;
• Your date of birth and/or age, e.g. to make sure that you are eligible to apply for the product and/or that it is suitable for you;
• Your nationality and national identifiers, for example, national insurance number, passport and driving licence;
• Your signature;
• Telephone, voice recording, video images (including CCTV) and IP address where known;
• Your status as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) or relative or close associate of a PEP (if applicable);
• Personal information which we obtain from fraud prevention agencies (see the section below on fraud prevention agencies);
• Details of the relationships, products and services you hold with us, including financial details, for example, balance, transactions, how you operate the accounts and services;
• Your occupation;
• Some special categories of personal data such as information on your political beliefs or those concerning your health or if you are a vulnerable customer; and
• Details of any unspent criminal convictions, pending convictions, bankruptcy/receivership, county court judgements, court records and pending orders. This will also include any sanctions or suspensions from any financial services regulator.

This will depend on the products or services you apply for and obtain from us. Before we explain what particular information we need in relation to our mortgages, savings products or core capital deferred shares, we will explain what information is relevant to all of our products and services.

Our products and services can be accessed by contacting us directly (including by telephone) and via our website as well as through professional and financial advisors and anyone else who acts as a person sitting in between you and us in relation to what we do for you. In this notice we will call these persons ‘brokers or other intermediaries’.

When a broker or other intermediary processes your personal information on our behalf, this privacy notice will apply and you should contact our Data Protection Officer to exercise your rights under data protection laws. When a broker or other intermediary processes your personal information as a data controller in their own right, their own privacy notice will apply and you should ask them for a copy if you do not have one by the time you are introduced to us.

Ecology Building Society of 7 Belton Road, Silsden, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD20 0EE is a data controller of your personal information. This means information that is about you or from which we can identify you. This privacy notice describes how we deal with your personal information. We are the data controller of this information under relevant data protection laws because in the context of our business relationship with you, we decide how and why it is processed in the ways explained in this privacy notice. When we use terms such as we, us and our in this notice, we mean Ecology Building Society.

Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted if you have queries about this privacy notice or wish to exercise any of the rights mentioned in it by writing to Ecology Building Society, 7 Belton Road, Silsden, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD20 0EE or by email to [email protected].

We are registered with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z5798250.

You will see at the end of this privacy notice that we mention the privacy notices of fraud prevention agencies and credit reference agencies (CRAs). More details about these credit reference agencies, their role as fraud prevention agencies, what personal data they hold (including how they use and share it), their retention periods and your data protection rights with the credit reference agencies, are available via the links in section 24 of this privacy notice or alternatively you can contact us for a paper copy. Please read them carefully and contact those organisations if you have questions (their details are in their notices).