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Last updated March 2023
This privacy notice explains how companies within Lloyds Banking Group use and look after your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn by having you as a customer, and your marketing choices. This notice also tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
This privacy notice will apply to you if you are or have been a customer of Lloyds Banking Group. If your personal information has been provided to Lloyds Banking Group, but you are not a customer, it may also apply to you. For example, if you have applied for a product or raised a complaint with us.
There are a range of different products and services throughout Lloyds Banking Group. Each one may have different requirements for the collection and use of your personal information. For this reason, some sections of this notice do not apply to all Lloyds Banking Group products and services.
We promise:
This section tells you who we are, what your personal information is, and how we get it. It explains how the law protects you by controlling what is allowed to happen to it.
This section gives you the legal name of the company that holds your personal information. This is known as the ‘legal entity’. It also tells you how you can get in touch with us.
Your personal information will be held by Bank of Scotland plc, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds Banking Group is made up of a mix of companies, set up on different legal entities. We'll let you know which you have a relationship with when you take out a product or service with us.
You can find out more about us at https://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/who-we-are/our-brands.html.
Contacting us about data privacy
Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section to contact us about any of the topics set out in this Privacy notice.
This section sets out the legal reasons we rely on, for each of the ways we may use your personal information.
As well as our Privacy Promise, your privacy is protected by law. This section explains how that works.
Data Protection law says that we can use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside Lloyds Banking Group. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons:
When we have a business or commercial reason of our own to use your personal information, this is called a ‘legitimate interest’. We will 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.
You have the right to object to use of your personal information in this way. You can do this by telling us anything that we may need to consider, to understand if our use of your personal information is fair. Please see the ‘Your data privacy rights’ section for more information.
The law and other regulations treat some types of sensitive personal information as special. This personal information is called ‘special categories of personal information’. We will not collect or use these types of personal information without your consent unless the law allows us to do so. If we do, it will only be when it is necessary:
Here is a list of all the ways that we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons we rely on to do so. This is also where we tell you what our legitimate interests are, where it is the reason for using your personal information.
We may rely on different reasons for using the same personal information, as this depends on the situation. For example, we may use your personal information to make an automated decision about you. This could be because of a legal duty, or to fulfil a contract we’ve made with you.
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This explains the meaning of the different types of personal information that data protection law covers.
We use many different kinds of personal information for a range of reasons, including managing our relationship with you and the products you hold. They are grouped together and listed below. We may use all or only some of these groups depending on the relationship you have with us.
The groups are all listed here so that you can see what we may know about you, even if we simply get it from seeing which shops you buy things in.We don’t use all this data in the same way. Some of it is useful for marketing, or for providing services to you. But some of it is private and sensitive and we treat it that way.
Type of personal information |
Description |
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Type of personal informationFinancial |
DescriptionYour financial position, status and history. |
Type of personal informationContact |
DescriptionYour name, where you live and how to contact you. |
Type of personal informationSocio-Demographic |
DescriptionThis includes details about your work or profession, nationality, education and where you fit into general social or income groupings. |
Type of personal informationTransactional |
DescriptionDetails about payments to and from your accounts, and insurance claims you make. |
Type of personal informationContractual |
DescriptionDetails about the products or services we provide to you. |
Type of personal informationLocational |
DescriptionData we get about where you are. This may come from your mobile phone or the place where you connect a computer to the internet. It can also include shops where you buy something with your card. |
Type of personal informationBehavioural |
DescriptionDetails about how you use products and services from us and other organisations. |
Type of personal informationTechnical |
DescriptionDetails on the devices and technology you use, including your Internet Protocol (IP) address. |
Type of personal informationCommunications |
DescriptionWhat we learn about you from letters and emails you write to us, and conversations between us. |
Type of personal informationSocial Relationships |
DescriptionYour family, friends, and other relationships. |
Type of personal informationOpen Data and Public Records |
DescriptionDetails about you that are in public records such as the Electoral Register, and information about you that is openly available on the internet. |
Type of personal informationUsage Data |
DescriptionOther data about how you use your products and services. |
Type of personal informationDocumentary Data |
DescriptionDetails about you that are stored in documents in different formats, or copies of them. This could include things like your passport, driving licence, or birth certificate. |
Type of personal informationGender Identity |
DescriptionInformation about the gender that you may identify as. |
Type of personal informationSpecial categories of personal information |
DescriptionThe law and other regulations treat some types of personal information as special. We will only collect and use these if the law allows us to do so:
You can read how we may use special types of personal information in the table ‘How the law protects you’. |
Type of personal informationChoices |
DescriptionAny permissions, consents or preferences that you give us. This includes things like how you want us to contact you or if you prefer large-print formats. |
Type of personal informationNational Identifier |
DescriptionA number or code given to you by a government to identify who you are. This may be a National Insurance or social security number, or Tax Identification Number (TIN). |
This section lists all the places where we get data that counts as part of your personal information.
We may collect personal information about you from other Lloyds Banking Group companies and any of these sources:
Data you give to us
This covers data that you give, and data provided by people linked with you or your business’s product or service, or people working on your behalf. This could mean a joint account holder, trustee, or fellow company director.
Data we collect when you use our services
This covers two things: details about how and where you access our services, and account activity that is shown on your statement.
We may also use cookies and similar tracking technologies to collect data. This can be from our websites or mobile apps, and when you receive, open or respond to emails we send you. You can find out more about this in our Cookies policy.
Data from outside organisations
This section explains how long we may keep your personal information for and why.
We will keep your personal information for as long as you have a product or are using a service from us, and for up to 10 years after. The reasons we may do this are:
We may also keep your personal information for longer than 10 years if we archive it for historical purposes or if we can’t delete it for legal, regulatory or technical reasons. For example, we have to hold pension transfer information indefinitely.
We will only use your personal information for those purposes and will make sure that your privacy is protected.
You can choose not to give us personal information. In this section, we explain the effects this may have.
We may need to collect personal information by law, or to enter into or fulfil a contract we have with you.
If you choose not to give us this personal information, it may delay or prevent us from fulfilling our contract with you, or doing what we must do by law. It may also mean that we can’t run your products or services. It could mean we cancel a product or service you have with us.
We sometimes ask for personal information that is useful, but not required by law or a contract. We will make this clear when we ask for it. You don’t have to give us these extra details, and it won't affect the products or services you have with us.
This section explains how we use data on our websites, apps and emails.
We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies on our websites and apps, and in emails we send you.
Cookies
Cookies are small computer files that get sent to your computer, tablet or mobile device by websites when you visit them. They stay on your device and get sent back to the website they came from when you go there again. Cookies store information about your visits to that website, such as your choices and other details. Some of this data does not contain personal details about you or your business, but it is still protected by this Privacy notice.
Email tracking
We track emails to help us improve the communications we send. Small images called pixels within our emails tell us things like whether you opened the email, how many times and the device you used. We may also set a cookie to find out if you clicked any links in the email.
To find out more about how we use cookies and email tracking, please see our Cookies policy.
This tells you who we share personal information with. It explains what it's used for in marketing, to provide credit and to combat fraud - and how this can affect you.
We may share your personal information 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 organisation that we may share your personal information with.
Lloyds Banking Group
We may share your personal information with other companies in Lloyds Banking Group.
Authorities
This means official bodies that include:
Banking and financial services
Outside companies we work with to provide services to you and to run our business.
Insurers
We share personal information with insurance industry companies to process claims and help reduce fraud. We do that in these ways:
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.
General business
Outside companies we use to provide our services, help grow and improve our business.
Learn more about how we use your information to make automated decisions.
Outside companies you may use
This could include:
Company mergers, and 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:
Sharing data that does not say who you are
We may share or sell some data to other companies outside Lloyds Banking Group, but only when no-one’s identity can be known or found out. One of the ways we can do this is by grouping customers together.
We do this so we and those other companies can look for general patterns and trends in the data, while keeping the customer identities secure. For instance, we might look at customers in a specific location shopping for clothes.
We could look at a group of customers by their age group, the area they live in, or their spending habits, such as the average amount spent in one month. But we would not include any data about who these customers are. When we use data this way, we use all the information – including current and historical data – that we hold about you and our other customers.
We and those other companies do this to learn about the types of customers we each have, how they use our products, and how our products perform for them. We and those other companies may also 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 securely hidden in this way.
We use marketing to let you know about products, services and offers that you may want. 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’.
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.
This is called profiling for marketing purposes.
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.
You can also tell us not to collect data 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 Cookies policy for details about how we use this data to improve our websites and mobile apps.
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.
We do not sell the personal information we have about you to outside organisations.
We may ask you to confirm or update your choices, if you take out any new products or services with us in 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.
Here are the types of automated decision we make:
Pricing
We may decide what to charge for some products and services based on what we know. For instance, 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 will 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 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 do, want, or need. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you. 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, and to make decisions based on what we learn. This is called profiling. It helps us to design 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 networks. We ask them for groups of people who are similar to 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.
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:
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 will 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 will go on sharing your personal information with CRAs for the duration of your relationship with us. From time to time, we may also search information that the CRAs have to help us manage your accounts.
We will share your personal information with CRAs and they will give us information about you. The data we exchange can include:
We’ll use this data to:
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 will 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 will 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 will 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:
Here are links to the information notice for each of the three main Credit Reference Agencies:
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 will share your personal information as needed to help combat fraud and other financial crime. The organisations we share data with are:
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 personal information, this is called a ‘legitimate interest’. We will 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 will use the personal information to:
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:
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’). When they do, there will be a contract in place to make sure the recipient protects the data to the same standard as the EEA. This may include following international frameworks for making data sharing secure.
Here is the web page for the information notice of the main Fraud Prevention Agency we use:
CIFAS - https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn
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 European Economic Area (EEA).
We will only send your data outside of the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA to:
If we do transfer your personal information outside the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA to our suppliers, we will make sure that it is protected to the same extent as in the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands and EEA. We’ll use one of these safeguards:
This section explains your data privacy rights and how you can action them. It also covers how to contact us or the data privacy regulator, or how to make a complaint.
This section explains your data privacy rights and how to contact us about them.
You have several rights around use of your personal information. Following is a list of these rights, including a description and, if applicable, how to contact us about them. These rights do not apply in all scenarios.
The right to be informed
You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal information. This means that we should provide you with details of how we use your personal information. This Data Privacy Notice is an example of this.
The right of access
You have the right to access a copy of your personal information, referred to as a Subject Access Request (SAR). Please see the ‘How to get a copy of your personal information’ instructions in the ‘How to contact us’ section.
The right to rectification
You have the right to question any information we have about you that you think is incorrect. We’ll take reasonable steps to check this for you and correct it. Please visit one of our branches, or see the ‘How to contact us’ section if you want to do this.
The right to erasure
You have the right to have your personal information deleted or removed if there is no reason for us to keep it. This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’. There may be legal or other official reasons why we need to keep or use your personal information. Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section if you think we shouldn’t be using it.
The right to restrict processing
You have the right to restrict processing of your personal information. This means it can only be used for certain things, such as legal claims or to exercise legal rights. You can ask us to do so if your personal information is not accurate, has been used unlawfully, is not relevant anymore, or if you have already asked us to stop using your personal information but you are waiting for us to tell you if we are allowed to keep on using it.
If we do restrict your personal information in this way, we won’t use or share it in other ways while it is restricted. Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section to do this.
The right to data portability
You have the right to get certain personal information from us as a digital file. This means you can keep and use it yourself, and give it to other organisations if you choose to. If you want, we will give it to you in an electronic format that can be easily re-used, or you can ask us to pass it on to other organisations for you. Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section to do this.
The right to object
You have the right to object to us keeping or using your personal information. There may be legal or other official reasons why we need to keep or use your personal information. Please see the ‘How to contact us’ section if you think that we shouldn’t be using it.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
You have rights around automated decision making and profiling. Automated decision making means a decision made solely by automated means, without any human involvement. Profiling means the automated processing of your personal information to evaluate certain things about you. You have the right to information about these kinds of processing, and the right to ask for human intervention or to challenge an automated decision.
You can do this when an automated decision is made about you, or you can see the ‘How to contact us’ section to speak to us about this. Please see the ‘How we work out what marketing you receive’ section for more information on profiling, and see the ‘How we use your information to make automated decisions’ section for more information on automated decision making.
The right to withdraw consent
You have the right to withdraw your consent for us to use your personal information at any time. This will only affect the way we use personal information when our reason for doing so is that we have your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.
If this is so, we will tell you. You can manage your preferences for activities like marketing in a few ways. Use your internet or mobile banking applications, visit one of our branches, or see the ‘How to contact us’ section to speak to us about this.
This section gives details of how to contact us about how we use your personal information. It also shows you where you can get in touch with the government regulator.
If you have a question about how we use your personal information, or would like to speak to us about your data privacy rights
If you have any questions, want more details about how we use your personal information, or would like to speak to us about one of your data privacy rights, you can call us on 0345 721 3141 (+44 1313 37 42 18 from outside the UK). Lines are open 8am – 8pm, seven days a week. Calls and online sessions may be monitored and recorded. Not all Telephone Banking services are available 24 hours a day.
If you need this communication in another format, such as large print, Braille or audio CD, please contact us. You can also call us using Relay UK if you have a hearing or speech impairment. There's more information on the Relay UK help pages.
SignVideo services are also available if you’re Deaf and use British Sign Language. If you need support due to a disability please get in touch.
If you want a copy of your personal information
To get a copy of all the personal information we hold about you, fill in this form or write to us at this address:
HBOS DSAR
Keens House
Anton Mill Lane
Andover
SP10 2NQ
If you would like to contact our Group Data Protection Officer
You can contact our Group Data Protection Officer by writing to the following address:
LBG Data Protection Officer
Lloyds Banking Group
PO BOX 548
Leeds
LS1 1WU
If you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information
If you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information, you can contact us using our secure online contact form.
If you are not happy with the outcome of a complaint
You also have the right to complain to the regulator, and to lodge an appeal if you’re not happy with the outcome of a complaint.
In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern.
In Jersey, please contact the Office of the Information Commissioner.
In Guernsey, please contact the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.
In Isle of Man, please contact the Information Commissioner.