Privacy notice

Financial Claims Helpline Limited (company number 09479421), Victoria House, 37 Anson Road, Manchester, M14 5DA, is the controller of your personal information. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration number ZA496489.

If you have any question about this notice or about how we use your information, contact our data protection lead by email at info@fchl.co.uk, or by post at the address above, marking your letter "Data protection".

• Identity and contact details: your name, date of birth, current and previous addresses, telephone numbers and email address.
• Details of your car finance agreement: the lender or provider, the type of finance, dates, reference numbers, vehicle details where relevant, and what you tell us about how it was sold to you.
• Identity documents: where your identity needs to be verified, a copy of a document such as a driving licence or passport. This is usually collected by the law firm rather than by us.
• Communications: recordings of telephone calls, emails, letters, text messages, web form submissions and our notes of what was discussed.
• Consent and marketing records: how and when you agreed to be contacted, which website or partner your details came from, and your contact preferences and any opt-outs.
• Complaints and support needs: details of any complaint, and anything you choose to tell us about your circumstances so that we can support you.
• Website data: we have not added analytics or advertising trackers. Hosting may use essential security or access technology and technical logs. See our cookie policy for more detail. This website does not have an online claim form. Its contact form does not send information to us directly: it prepares an email in your own email app, which you choose whether to send.

We do not ask for special category information such as health information. If you choose to tell us about your circumstances so that we can support you, we record only what is needed and we rely on your explicit consent to do so. You can withdraw that consent at any time. We do not collect information about criminal convictions.

FCHL previously obtained customer information through marketing activities and third-party partners. We now process personal information solely for existing customer support, managing previous enquiries and introductions, complaints, and meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.

• From you, when you contact us, speak to us or write to us.
• Previously, from websites we operated and from marketing partners who collected your details with your permission to pass them to us. We told you which source your details came from when we first contacted you, and we only worked with partners who could show that they obtained your permission lawfully. We no longer obtain information in this way.
• From the law firm we introduced you to, which may tell us whether it has accepted your claim and how it is progressing so that our records stay accurate and so that we can check you have been contacted.
• From credit reference agencies, indirectly. We do not carry out credit searches ourselves. Where a soft credit search was needed to identify your agreements, it was carried out with your permission and only after you had been told which organisation would carry it out and which agencies it used. A soft search is visible to you on your credit file but not to lenders, and it does not affect your credit score.

Data protection law requires us to have a legal ground for each way we use your information. The table below sets out what we do and the ground we rely on.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered the effect on you and concluded that our use is fair, is what you would reasonably expect, and does not override your rights. You can ask us for more detail about that assessment.

We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.

We no longer carry out marketing. Previously, we contacted people about our services by telephone, text message or email only where they had agreed to that, or where the law otherwise allowed it, and we screened numbers against the Telephone Preference Service before making marketing calls.

We keep records of the permissions we relied on and of opt-outs, as set out in section 8, so that we can show how we used your information and make sure you are not contacted again. If you have a concern about marketing you received from us, contact us using the details in section 1. We do not sell your information and we do not pass it to anyone else for their own marketing.

• The law firm we introduced you to, which becomes a controller of your information in its own right and has its own privacy notice.
• Service providers who act on our instructions, including telephony and call-recording services, customer relationship systems, email and document services, IT hosting, and companies in our group. Previously, this also included marketing partners who ran contact-centre or marketing operations on our behalf; those activities have ended. Each is bound by a written contract that restricts what it may do with your information.
• Regulators and public bodies, including the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Information Commissioner's Office, the courts, the police and fraud prevention bodies, where the law requires or allows it.
• Our professional advisers, such as auditors, lawyers, insurers and compliance consultants, under a duty of confidentiality.
• A buyer or successor, if our business or its assets are sold, transferred or reorganised, in which case the new owner may use your information only in the ways described in this notice.

We keep your information in the United Kingdom wherever possible. Some of our suppliers may store or access information in other countries. Where that happens we make sure that either the UK government has decided the country provides adequate protection, or we have put in place the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses and carried out a transfer risk assessment. You can ask us for details of the safeguards we use.

When we no longer need your information we delete it or make it anonymous.

You have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• have your information deleted in certain circumstances, for example where we no longer need it;
• restrict how we use it while a question about accuracy or our legal ground is resolved;
• receive the information you gave us in a portable format, where we rely on consent or a contract;
• object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests, and to object to direct marketing at any time, which we will always act on;
• withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it, without affecting what was done before; and
• complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 1. We will respond within one month, or tell you if we need longer because a request is complex. We may need to check your identity first. There is no charge unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.

We protect your information with access controls so that only staff who need it can see it, encryption of information in transit, secure and contractually bound suppliers, staff training, and regular reviews of our systems. If a security breach affects your information and is likely to cause you harm, we will tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.

Our services are for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 18. If you believe we have done so, contact us and we will delete it.

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information, please contact us first so that we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, by telephone on 0303 123 1113, or by post to Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

We review this notice at least once a year and whenever our processing changes. The version number and date at the top tell you when it was last updated. If a change significantly affects you, we will tell you directly.