This privacy policy explains how Wisely Financial Services Ltd ("Wisely", "we", "us" or "our") collects, uses, shares and protects your personal information when you visit our website, enquire about our services, or become a client. We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your data openly and in line with UK data protection law.
Please read this policy carefully so you understand how we treat your information. By using our website or our services, you confirm you have read and understood this policy.
1. Who we are
Wisely is a trading style of Wisely Financial Services Ltd. We are an appointed representative of Pivotal Financial Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 665649).
2. Information we collect
Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect and process the following types of personal information:
- Identity and contact details — your name, date of birth, address, email address and telephone number.
- Financial information — income, expenditure, employment, assets, liabilities, existing mortgage and insurance details, bank details and credit history.
- Family and lifestyle information — marital status, dependants and details relevant to protection advice.
- Health information — where relevant to a life, critical illness or income protection application (a special category of data, processed only with your explicit consent).
- Website and technical data — IP address, browser type, pages visited and similar information collected through cookies (see section 8).
- Records of our dealings — notes of calls, meetings, emails and the advice we provide.
3. How we use your information
We use your personal information to:
- assess your needs and provide you with mortgage, life insurance and home insurance advice;
- research the market and recommend suitable products;
- prepare and submit applications to lenders and insurers on your behalf;
- administer your arrangements and respond to your enquiries;
- meet our legal, regulatory and compliance obligations; and
- keep you informed about your arrangements and, where you have agreed, relevant services.
4. Our lawful bases
We only process your personal information where we have a lawful basis to do so. Depending on the circumstances, this will be one or more of the following:
- Performance of a contract — to provide the advice and services you have asked us for.
- Legal obligation — to comply with our regulatory and legal duties.
- Legitimate interests — to run and improve our business, where your interests do not override ours.
- Consent — for certain marketing, and for processing special category data such as health information. You can withdraw consent at any time.
5. Who we share it with
We will only share your information where necessary to provide our services or to meet our obligations. This may include:
- lenders, insurers and product providers, to arrange the products you have requested;
- Pivotal Financial Limited, our principal firm, for compliance oversight;
- credit reference and fraud prevention agencies, where relevant to an application;
- our trusted service providers, such as IT and customer-management systems; and
- regulators, law enforcement or other authorities where we are required to do so by law.
We never sell your personal information to third parties.
6. How long we keep it
We keep your personal information only for as long as necessary to provide our services and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. For mortgage and insurance advice this is typically at least the lifetime of the product plus a further period required by the FCA and other rules. When information is no longer needed, we securely delete or anonymise it.
7. Your rights
Under data protection law you have a number of rights over your personal information, including the right to:
- access a copy of the information we hold about you;
- ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances;
- object to or restrict how we process your information;
- request that we transfer your information to another organisation; and
- withdraw consent where we rely on it.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details in section 1. We will respond within the timeframes required by law.
8. Cookies
Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to help it function, to remember your preferences, and to understand how visitors use the site so we can improve it. You can control cookies through your browser settings, and where required we will ask for your consent before setting non-essential cookies. A separate cookie notice provides more detail.
9. Keeping your information secure
We take the security of your personal information seriously and use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect it against unauthorised access, loss or misuse. Access is limited to those who need it to do their job, and our service providers are required to do the same.
10. Complaints
If you have any concerns about how we handle your personal information, please contact us first so we can put things right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection, at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with a revised "last updated" date, so please check back periodically.