Privacy Statement

The data controller for any personal information you give us is Guardian Financial Services.

This statement explains Guardian Financial Service’s policy on data protection and privacy.

Purpose of this website

This website is intended to provide information on our products and services we provide. You are able to contact us through this web service.

Use of personal information

We’ll only use the information you give us to deal with your requests and enquiries and to understand client movement (through the use of cookies) around our website.

How Guardian Financial Services treats your personal data

We fully support and follow the principles of Data Protection, as set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act). We make sure that our staff – and those acting on our behalf – get, use and disclose personal data lawfully and correctly. We don’t believe we can operate successfully otherwise. It’s also important in making sure everyone we deal with has confidence in us. This policy operates in all of our offices – both in the UK and overseas.

Specifically, the principles require that personal information will:

  • be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, won’t be processed unless specific conditions are met
  • be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and won’t be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes
  • be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which it’s processed
  • be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date
  • not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes
  • be processed in accordance with the rights of the individual under the Act
  • have in place appropriate technical and organisational measures against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data
  • not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area (EEA) (the countries of the European Union plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data or unless specific agreement has been sought from the individuals concerned

By using appropriate and consistent management and controls, we’ll:

  • meet our legal obligations to specify what we’re using the personal information for in the Guardian Financial Services Data Protection Notification particulars, which you can find on the Information Commissioner’s website at http://www.ico.gov.uk
  • only collect and process information to the extent that we need it to operate or to comply with a legal requirement
  • make sure the information is accurate and of high quality
  • apply checks to determine how long the information is held for
  • make sure that the people we hold information on can fully exercise their rights under the Act
  • safeguard personal information by taking appropriate technical and organisational security measures
  • make sure that personal data isn’t transferred outside the EEA without suitable safeguards or agreement from the individual

Your rights under the Data Protection Act

You have a number of rights under the Data Protection Act, including:

  • the right to get copies of all the personal information that we hold on you, with only a few exceptions, and
  • the right not to receive direct marketing

If you want copies of information, just write to our Data Protection Coordinator, Guardian Financial Services, Ballam Road, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire FY8 4JZ, enclosing your details, a description of the information you want and a cheque for £10. If you don’t want to receive direct marketing, just let us know by writing to the same address.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on a user's hard drive containing information about the user. They work by setting data on the visitor’s browser to anonymously track the pages they visit on a website. We also use action tags (sometimes called web beacons).

We currently use cookies/tags on our websites to:

  • anonymously track participation in online surveys accessed on or from the Guardian Financial Services website. We’ll set a cookie so that we remember whether you want to take part in a survey so we don’t have to ask every time you visit the site. We won’t store or collect any personal data.
  • anonymously track the usage of the website, either by Guardian Financial Services or its appointed third party. We also use a third-party company to place adverts on the web, which link to the Guardian Financial Services website. When someone clicks on one of these adverts and arrives at the Guardian Financial Services website, we’ll anonymously track which pages they visit. This helps us to develop our site and online advertising and improve user experience.
  • anonymously track visitors’ usage of the Guardian Financial Services website. When someone visits the site, we’ll track which pages they access so we can understand which pages are used most and use this knowledge to develop our site and improve user experience.

Guardian Financial Services, and/or the third party, may use non-personal information about your visits to the website, for example date/time of visit, the cookie and the first three octets of the IP address. Neither Guardian Financial Services nor the third party collects personally identifying information (PII).

You can find more information about cookies, including how to block them and/or delete them, at http://www.aboutcookies.org/.

Third-party use of information

You do have the option to transfer to websites that have links on our sites. If you choose to use one of these links, you may be asked for separate login IDs and passwords for these services. We won’t hold on to any information to do with that transfer.

Security

We currently operate our security requirements through our security policy:

  • Breaches in security are dealt with by the security policy.
  • All members of staff, including temporary members of staff, sign confidentiality agreements to make sure they treat the information with respect.
  • Staff can only access the systems that they need to do their job.
  • We make sure that personal information is only passed to those people and organisations that are entitled to know. We check to confirm that people are who they say they are, and that these organisations or people are allowed to have access to this information. Every business area has its own verification checks that relate to the data held and types of people who may need access.
  • We train all our staff in data protection every two years. This makes sure that members of staff know how to treat personal information and the risks involved if it’s poorly treated.

We’ve put security policies, rules and technical measures in place to protect the personal data that we have under our control from:

  • unauthorised access
  • improper use or disclosure
  • unauthorised modification
  • unlawful destruction or accidental loss

All our employees and data processors who have access to, and are associated with, handling our visitors' personal data are obliged to respect its confidentiality.