This policy applies to personal information we hold about individuals, sole traders and partnerships. It does not apply to information we hold about companies and other organisations.

We believe it is important to protect your privacy, and so we are committed to giving you a personalised service that meets your needs in a way that also protects that privacy. We may collect information about you and then use it to meet your needs.

We may obtain this information:

• From you when you agree to take a service or product from us, in which case this may include your contact details, date of birth, how you will pay for the product or service and your bank details.
• From you when you contact us with an enquiry or in response to a communication from us, in which case this may tell us something about how you use our services.

Please note that some of the personal information we hold about you may be 'sensitive personal data' within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998 - for example, information about your health or ethnic origin. If you give us sensitive data about yourself or others (such as health details or details of any criminal convictions of members of your household), you agree (and confirm that the relevant subject of the information has agreed) to us processing such information in the manner set out in this document Information you provide or we hold about you (whether or not under our contract (or contracts) with you) may be used by us or our agents (or both) to:

• identify you when you contact us;
• help run, and contact you about improved running of, any accounts, services and products we have provided before, or provide now or in the future;
• carry out marketing analysis and customer profiling (including with transactional information) and create statistical and testing information;
• help to prevent and detect fraud or loss; and contact you in any way (including mail, email, phone, visit, text or multimedia messages) about products and services offered by us and selected partners. We will only contact you in this way if you have previously shown your consent.

We may allow other people and organisations to use information we hold about you:

• to provide the services you have asked for;
• as part of the process of selling one or more of our businesses;
• if we have been asked to provide information for legal or regulatory purposes; or as part of current or future legal proceedings.

When we first obtain personal information from you, or when you take a new service or product from us, we will give you the opportunity to tell us if you do or do not want to receive information from us about other services or products.