Privacy Notice

We may share your personal information with other companies in the Lloyds Banking Group. We may also share it with outside organisations such as credit card providers, insurers or tax authorities. This is so that we can provide you with products and services, run our business, and obey rules that apply to us. Here we list all the types of organisations that we may share your personal information with. 

Lloyds Banking Group

We may share your personal information with other companies in the Lloyds Banking Group. These companies may use different brand names. For details of our brands, please see the ‘Who we are’ section.

We share the information to make sure our records are accurate. For example, if you hold products with different brands in the Group, and you update your information with one of them, we may share this information with the other brands you hold products with.

We also share the information to help us provide you with products and services. For example, we could use information we learn about you from your transaction history with one of our brands to support an insurance product application with another brand.

Third parties who help us provide products or services

We work with third parties outside of the Lloyds Banking Group who provide products or services under our brand names. If you apply for one of these products, we may share information about you with the third party. If we want to share information in this way, we, or the third party will tell you before we do so.   

Authorities

This means official bodies that include:

• central and local government
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other tax authorities
• UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme and other deposit guarantee schemes
• law enforcement and fraud prevention agencies

Banking and financial services

Outside companies we work with to provide services to you and to run our business.

• Credit reference agencies (such as TransUnion, Equifax and Experian)
• Someone linked with you or your business’s product or service
  This could mean a joint account holder, trustee, fellow company director or partner.
• Other financial services companies. This can be to fulfil a payment or other service as part of a contract with you; or to help prevent, detect and prosecute unlawful acts and fraudulent behaviour
  
• Independent Financial Advisors. This could be someone who you, your employer, or product owner have chosen to advise you on things like pensions or life assurance
• Agents who collect debt that is owed
• Price comparison websites and similar companies
  We only do so if you buy something from us through such a company. We only share details needed to confirm what you have bought, to fulfil our own contract with the company
• Employers. For example, to confirm your identity if we ask for a mortgage reference
• Companies you ask us to share your data with
  This is to do with something called Open Banking, which gives you more freedom and control to use your own banking data. It can make it easier for you or your business to shop around for products like credit cards, savings and current accounts
• Companies whose shares we hold for you in one of our nominee companies. This is usually to do with Share Dealing accounts. This is where we hold shares for you in the name of our nominee company, and that company or their agent asks us to share details of the beneficial owners of the shares with them.

Insurers

We share personal information with insurance industry companies to process claims and help reduce fraud. We do that in these ways:

• If you apply for insurance through us, we may pass your personal or business details to the insurer
• If you apply for insurance with us as the insurer, we may share your personal or business details with reinsurers
• If you make an insurance claim, information you give to us or the insurer may be put on a register of claims. This will be shared with other insurers, our agents, suppliers and sub-contractors. In some cases, we may also share it with our business partners if you also have a relationship with them

Other services and schemes

These are organisations that we may need to share your personal information with, because of what you can do with the product or service you have with us.

• If you have a debit, credit or charge card with us, we will share transaction details with companies which help us to provide this service (such as Visa and Mastercard)
  We need to do this to keep your account balance and statements up to date, for example
• If you use Direct Debits, we'll share your data with the Direct Debit scheme
• If you have a product which has a loyalty scheme, we will share your data with that scheme
• If you have a product with benefits such as travel insurance or discount offers, we will share your data with the benefit providers. We may also share it with other companies involved in how you use the service such as a private car park operator
• If you have a secured loan or mortgage with us, we may share information with other lenders who also hold a charge on the property, such as the other party in a shared ownership scheme
• If you or your employer have a product with us that includes extra services or features, such as daily rental vehicles, we'll share your data with the providers of those services or features
• If we are contacted by a third-party about fines, penalties or charges imposed on you, we may share this with your employer, or share your details with these third parties
• If we carry out driving license, vehicle or any other checks as part of our products, services, or features we may share information with suppliers and other third parties needed for us to provide those to you, or your employer

General business
Outside companies we use to provide our services, help grow and improve our business.

• Agents, suppliers, sub-contractors and advisers
  These are types of firms that we use to help us run accounts, policies and services.
• Companies we have a contractual arrangement, joint venture or agreement with. This could be a store, a manufacturer, or a broker who is offering finance deals or other products, services or features through us
• Organisations that introduce you to us
  This might be a store or car dealership that offers finance deals through us, or a price comparison website
• Market researchers
  These firms may get in touch with you on our behalf to ask you for your opinions and feedback. Sometimes these firms will combine what you tell them with data from other sources to study it. They'll use this to help us understand our customers’ point of view, so that we can improve the way we work as a business
• Advisers who help us to come up with new ways of doing business
  This might be a legal firm, IT supplier or consultancy
• Advertisers and technology providers that you use, such as websites you visit, social media, and providers of apps and smart devices.

This is so that:

• You are only shown marketing we think you might be interested in
• You are not shown marketing we think you won’t be interested in
• We can try to find new customers who are like you, or have similar interests to yours

Learn more about how we use your information to make automated decisions.

Outside companies you may use.

This could include:

• Price comparison websites and similar companies. We only do so if you buy something from us through such a company. We only share details needed to confirm what you have bought, to fulfil our own contract with the company
• Third-party payment providers. For example if you use an app on your phone to pay for something, then we may share payment and transaction data with them. This includes the amount, type, location, origin and recipients.

Company mergers, takeovers and transfers of products or services

We may also share your personal information if the ownership of products or services or the make-up of Lloyds Banking Group changes in the future:

• We may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business, or our assets, including products or services. Or we may try to bring other businesses into Lloyds Banking Group. This is sometimes called Mergers and Acquisitions or ‘company takeovers’.
• During any such process, we may share your data with other parties involved. We’ll only do this if they agree to keep your data safe and private.
• If the change to our Group happens, then other parties may use your data in the same way as set out in this notice.

Sharing information that doesn't reveal your identity

We may share or sell some information to other companies outside Lloyds Banking Group, but only when we have removed any personal details, so that no-one’s identity can be known or found out.

We and those other companies do this to help them learn about the types of customers they have, how customers use their products, and how their products perform. It also helps us to learn about the markets we each operate in and how our competitors perform. The law says data is not considered to be personal information after customer identities have been removed.

One of the ways we can share information without revealing customers' identities is by grouping customers' information together. Companies can use this grouped customer information to look for general patterns and trends in the information, without knowing individual customer identities. For example, we might provide them with information about:

• types of customers in a specific location shopping for clothes
• customers that fall into a particular age group, or live in a particular area
• patterns of spending habits, such as the average amount spent in one month

To create this information, we analyse all of the details we hold about you and other customers. This includes information about your current and past products and services you have with us.

This section tells you how we decide what marketing to show or send you. It also explains how we work out what you may be interested in.

We may use your personal information to make decisions about what products, services and offers we think you may be interested in. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘marketing’. We may send you carefully selected messages on products and offers from ourselves, other companies within Lloyds Banking Group and selected third parties.

When we can use your personal information for marketing

We can only use your personal information to send you marketing messages if we have either your consent or a ‘legitimate interest’. That is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal information. It must not conflict unfairly with your own interests.

How we decide what marketing may interest you

The personal information we have for you is made up of what you tell us, and data we collect when you use our services, or from outside organisations we work with. We study this to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you.

We use the information to understand what kind of things you like, special events in your life, and how you react to different kinds of marketing material.

This is called profiling for marketing purposes. It helps us to decide what products, services and offers we can promote to you. We may also conduct profiling for other purposes – please see 'Tailoring products and services' under 'How we use your information to make automated decisions' for further information.

You can contact us at any time and ask us to stop using your personal information this way. Please see the ‘Your data privacy rights’ section for more information, and the ‘How to contact us’ section to contact us about this.

How we send you marketing

We may show or send you marketing material online (on our own and other websites including social media), in our own and other apps, or by email, mobile phone, post or through smart devices and other digital channels.

Your marketing choices

You can tell us to stop sending you marketing at any time. Whatever you choose, we’ll still send you statements and other important information such as changes to your existing products and services.

You can also tell us not to collect your personal information for marketing purposes while you are using our websites or mobile apps. If you do, you may still see some marketing, but it may not be tailored to you. See our Cookie Policy for details about how we use this information to improve our websites and mobile apps.

We may ask you to confirm or update your choices, if you take out any new products or services with us in the future. We’ll also ask you to do this if there are changes in the law, regulation or the structure of our business.

If you change your mind, you can contact us to update your choices at any time. Please see the ‘Your data privacy rights’ section for more information, and the ‘How to contact us’ section to contact us about this.

Here we tell you how we use automated systems to make decisions about you and your money. We also explain your right to challenge decisions made this way.

We sometimes use systems to make automated decisions about you or your business. This helps us to make sure our decisions are quick, fair, efficient and correct, based on what we know. Automated decisions can affect the products, services or features we may offer you now or in the future, or the price we charge for them. They are based on personal information that we have or that we are allowed to collect from others.

Some of our systems learn from this information to make sure our automated decisions stay accurate and fair. This is sometimes known as ‘artificial intelligence’ or ‘machine learning’.  

Here are the types of automated decisions we make:

Pricing

We may decide what to charge for some products and services based on what we know. For example, if you use our online mortgage calculator, it will use the personal financial details you put in to estimate the kind of mortgage we may offer you. If you apply for insurance, we’ll compare what you tell us with other records to work out how likely you are to make a claim. This will help us to decide whether to offer you the product and what price to charge you.

Tailoring products and services

The personal information we have for you is made up of what you tell us, and information we collect when you use our services, or from outside organisations we work with. We study this to form a view on what we think you may do, want, or need. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you.

Profiling for other non-marketing purposes

Sometimes we use your personal information to create a profile about you, for purposes other than marketing or making automated decisions about you. This means we build up a picture over time of your tastes, and things we think you may need, want or do based on how you interact with us. This may be changed into a ‘score’ or number we add to your record with us.

We use this information to place you in groups with similar customers. These are called customer segments. We use these to study and learn about our customers’ needs. It helps us to design different products, services and offers for different customer segments, and to manage our relationships with them. It also helps us tailor what individuals see on our own and other websites and mobile apps, including social media.

We also use customer segments from outside companies we work with, such as social media. We ask them for groups of people who are like you, or have interests that are like yours in some ways. These companies help us look for new customers who may be interested in products, services or offers that our existing customers are interested in.

You can ask us to stop using your information in this way. Please see the ‘Your data privacy rights’ section, and the ‘How to contact us’ section for details about how to do this.

Detecting fraud

We use your personal information to help decide if your personal or business accounts may be being used for fraud or money-laundering. We may detect that an account is being used in ways that fraudsters work. Or we may notice that an account is being used in a way that is unusual for you or your business. If we think there is a risk of fraud, we may stop activity on the accounts or refuse access to them.

Opening accounts

When you open an account with us, we check that the product or service is relevant for you, based on what we know. We also check that you or your business meet the conditions needed to open the account. This may include checking age, residency, nationality or financial position. It may mean we can’t offer you the account you want.

Approving credit

We use a system to decide whether to lend money to you or your business, when you apply for credit such as a loan or credit card. This is called credit scoring. It uses past data to assess how you’re likely to act while paying back any money you borrow. This includes data about similar accounts you may have had before.

Credit scoring uses data from three sources:

• Your application form
• Credit reference agencies
• Data we may already hold.

It gives an overall assessment based on this. Banks and other lenders use this to help us make responsible lending decisions that are fair and informed.

Credit scoring methods are tested regularly to make sure they are fair and unbiased.

This credit score can determine whether we’ll give you credit or allow you to take another product or service.

Your rights

You can object to an automated decision we have made and ask that a person reviews it.

If you want to know more about these rights, please see the ‘Your data privacy rights’ section for more information, and the ‘How to contact us’ section to contact us about this.

This section explains how we work with outside companies to decide whether to lend you money through products like credit cards or loans. It also explains how we manage our products during your relationship with us. It explains what we do and why we do it.

We carry out credit and identity checks when you apply for a product or services for you or your business. We may use Credit Reference Agencies to help us with this.

We'll go on sharing your personal information with CRAs during your relationship with us. From time to time, we may also search information that the CRAs have to help us manage your accounts.

We'll share your personal information with CRAs and they'll give us information about you. The data we exchange can include:

• name, address and date of birth
• credit application
• details of any shared credit
• financial situation and history
• fraud prevention information

We’ll use this data to:

• assess whether you or your business is able to afford to make repayments
• make sure what you’ve told us is true, correct and up to date
• help detect and prevent financial crime
• manage your accounts with us
• trace and recover debts
• make sure any offers are relevant for you

This will include details of money going into the account, and the account balance. If you borrow, it will also include details of your repayments, and whether you repay in full and on time. We'll also tell the CRAs when you settle your accounts with us. The CRAs may give this information to other organisations that want to check your credit status.

When we ask CRAs about you or your business, they'll note it on your credit file. This is called a credit search. Other lenders may see this and we may see credit searches from other lenders.

If you apply for a product with someone else, we'll link your records with theirs. We'll do the same if you tell us you have a spouse, partner or civil partner – or that you are in business with other partners or directors.

You should tell them about this before you apply for a product or service. It's important that they know your records will be linked together, and that credit searches may be made on them.

CRAs will also link your records together. These links will stay on your files unless one of you asks the CRAs to break the link. You'll normally need to give proof that you no longer have a financial link with each other.

You can find out more about the CRAs on their websites, in the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN). This includes details about:

• Who they are
• Their role as fraud prevention agencies
• The data they hold and how they use it
• How they share personal information
• How long they can keep data
• Your data protection rights

Here are links to the information notice for each of the three main Credit Reference Agencies:
TransUnion
Equifax
Experian

We use these agencies mainly with UK, Isle of Man or EEA products and customers. For non-UK, Isle of Man or EEA products and customers, we may not use these agencies. We may instead use other regional CRAs. Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section if you’d like to speak to us about this.

This section deals with information we share outside our group to help fight financial crime. This includes crimes such as fraud, money-laundering and terrorist financing.

We may need to confirm your identity before we provide products or services to you or your business. This may include carrying out fraud checks at the point of sale.

Once you have become a customer of ours, we'll share your personal information as needed to help combat fraud and other financial crime. The organisations we share data with are:

• Registered Fraud Prevention Agencies 
• Other agencies and bodies acting for the same purpose
• Industry databases used for this purpose
• Insurers

Throughout our relationship with you, we and these organisations exchange data to help prevent, deter, detect and investigate fraud and money-laundering.

We and these organisations can’t use your personal information unless we have a proper reason to do so. It must be needed either for us to obey the law, or for a ‘legitimate interest’.

When we have a business or commercial reason of our own to use your information, this is called a ‘legitimate interest’. We'll tell you what that is, if we are going to rely on it as the reason for using your personal information. Even then, it must not unfairly go against your interests.

We'll use the information to:

• Confirm identities
• Help prevent fraud and/or money-laundering
• Fulfil any contracts you or your business has with us

We or an FPA may allow law enforcement agencies to access your personal information. This is to support their duty to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute crime.

These other organisations can keep personal information for different lengths of time, up to six years.

The information we use
These are some of the kinds of personal information that we use:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Residential address
• History of where you have lived
• Contact details, such as email addresses and phone numbers
• Financial data
• Whether you have been a victim of fraud
• Data about insurance claims you have made
• Data about your or your businesses products or services
• Employment details
• Vehicle details
• Data that identifies the computers or other devices you use to connect to the internet. This includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address

Automated decisions for fraud prevention
The information we have for you or your business is made up of what you tell us, and data we collect when you use our services, or from third parties we work with.

We and other organisations acting to prevent fraud may process your personal information in systems that look for fraud by studying patterns in the data. We may find that an account or policy is being used in ways that fraudsters work. Or we may notice that an account is being used in a way that is unusual for you or your business. Either of these could indicate a risk of fraud or money-laundering against a customer, the bank or the insurer.

How this can affect you
If we or an FPA decide there is a risk of fraud, we may stop activity on the accounts or block access to them. FPAs and cross-industry organisations may also keep a record of the risk that you or your business may pose.

This may result in other organisations refusing to provide you with products or services, or to employ you.

Data transfers out of the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA

FPAs and other organisations we share data with for these purposes may send personal information to countries outside the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and European Economic Area (‘EEA’). This may include countries where the UK Government has decided that your data will be protected to UK standards. If the data is sent to another type of country, the FPAs or other organisations will make sure your data stays protected to the same standard as the EEA by making sure appropriate safeguards are in place. This may include following international frameworks for making data sharing secure.

The main Fraud Prevention Agency we use, CIFAS, has published more information about data transfers.

This section tells you about the safeguards that keep your personal information safe and private, if it is sent outside the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA.

We'll only send your data outside of the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and European Economic Area (‘EEA’) to:

• Follow your instructions.

For example, if you book a hotel in Australia with your Lloyds Banking Group card, we’ll send the details necessary to fulfil that payment to the hotel’s bank.

• Comply with a legal duty. 

For example, we share information about US citizens with the US tax authority.

• Work with our suppliers who help us to run your accounts and services.

If we do transfer your personal information outside the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA to our suppliers, we'll make sure it’s protected to the same extent as in the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:

• Transfer it to a non-EEA country with privacy laws that give the same protection as the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and the EEA. Learn more on the European Commission Justice website
• Put in place a contract with the recipient that means they must protect it to the same standards as the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA. Read more about this here on the European Commission Justice website