Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Amplifi Capital (U.K.) Limited trading as My Community Finance
Please read this privacy policy carefully.
1. SUMMARY
This privacy policy governs the collection, storage and use of personal information collected by us, Amplifi Capital (U.K.) Limited (we will refer to ourselves as "Amplifi" or "we", "us", "our" from here) through the following channels:
- Email;
- Our website at www.amplificapital.com and www.mycommunityfinance.co.uk; and
- Personal information which we obtain or which you provide to us in connection with our business: the establishment or continuation of credit facilities or provision of business advisory, lending and/or other financial services.
This policy provides you with details about the personal information we collect from you, how we use your personal information and your rights to control personal information we hold about you. Please read this privacy policy carefully – by accessing or browsing this website or applying for a loan, a deposit or one of our products, you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to this privacy policy in its entirety. If you do not agree to this privacy policy in its entirety, you must not use this website or apply for a loan, deposit or product.
2. WHO WE ARE
Amplifi is a company registered in England and Wales (registration number 08641995), whose registered office is at 30 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5EU, UK. Amplifi is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with permission to enter into a regulated credit agreement as lender or to act as a credit broker, with firm reference number 718749.
3. DATA PROTECTION OFFICER
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out below.
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Data Protection Officer
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Full name of legal entity: Amplifi Capital (U.K.) Limited
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Email address: [DPO@mycommunityfinance.co.uk]; or
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Postal address: Amplifi Capital, 30 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5EU, UK.
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Telephone number: 020 375 0221
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
4. THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
When you access the Amplifi or MyCommunityFinance websites or provide any information to us using the online forms provided, or over the telephone, or by electronic transfer, or in person to one of the Amplifi team, we may collect some or all of the following types of information:
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your name, date of birth, address, gender, telephone number, national insurance number, driving licence registration number, passport and identity information email address, employment details, income, bank statements and other bank details, common bond information (e.g. for credit union memberships), dependents and essential expenditure and (where we have received consent to our processing of it, health information) of either you, the directors or shareholders of your business or any guarantors in relation to a loan taken out by you or your business;
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the details of any leases which you or your business have entered into in respect of your business premises and any applicable business premises rates which are payable in connection with these;
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the details of any loans which you or any directors or shareholders of your business carry out through our website or in person;
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any correspondence which is made between us and you or any directors or shareholders of your business; and
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the details of the source of your funds.
We may also receive the above types of information about you from your lender, potential lender, aggregators such as a price comparison site or your joint applicant(s) or account holder(s) or credit reference and fraud prevention agencies.
Information provided by you will be subject to data profiling, but our decision is not based solely on that profiling.
When applying for a loan we will also collect information about you when assessing your application. For more on which see the Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention Checks section below.
If you have signed up to the Open Banking service through our trusted partner consents.online, we are able to retrieve with your permission your bank statements. This information is shared securely with our systems and aids the processing of your loan application and in connection with any potential future products and services. You may revoke this access via your online banking portal. The access is only to obtain your bank statements automatically and cannot be used by our systems to withdraw or deposit to your account.
Our partner is consents.online, an FCA approved provider of bank account statements, primarily for credit-risk decisions made by credit providers. More details are available at: https://consents.online/
Individuals under the age of 18 are not permitted to use the services provided through our website and we will not knowingly collect any personal information in respect of anyone under 18.
5. HOW WE MAY STORE AND USE YOUR INFORMATION
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. We will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
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where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you;
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where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) such as for fraud prevention, credit referencing and credit checking, offering our products and services to you, for quality control and analysis of our products and services, communicating and managing our relationship with you, administer and protect our business; and where your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
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where we need to comply with a legal obligation; or
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where we have your consent to carry out the processing.
We (or third party data processors acting on our behalf) may collect, store and use your personal information listed above for the following purposes:
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to provide you with access to our website and enable you to register for an online account;
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to enable you to make applications to become a borrower in respect a loan;
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to let you know about our fees and charges;
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to enable you to view details of our current loan products available;
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to make credit, fraud prevention and other similar enquiries into your financial standing in order to make lending decisions about you (see credit reference and fraud prevention checks below for more details);
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to process, administer or perform loan agreements and lending activities;
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to collect repayments or undertake recovery actions against any credit or loans provided;
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for providing loan administration services such as tracking your payment history and providing statements, as well as audit and debt collection purposes;
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to assist in the administration of your savings and deposits accounts;
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for any service or product development analysis, statistical or other purposes and
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to provide you with information, products and services which we provide which either you request, or which we feel will be of interest to you unless you tell us you do not want to receive this information as to which, see “Direct Marketing – Your Right to Opt Out’ section below.
In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies (“CRAs”). Where you apply for banking services, credit or a loan through us we may also make periodic searches at CRAs to manage your account with your lender or us. To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your credit or loan application and about your financial situation and financial history and data for collections and recoveries management. CRAs will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information, and data for collections and recoveries management and fraud prevention information.
We will use this information to:
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Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product;
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Assess your eligibility to products or services provided by us or our partners;
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Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us;
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Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering;
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Manage your account(s);
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Trace and recover debts; and
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Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.
We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs.
Information on applications may be sent to CRAs and will be recorded by them. Where you sign a loan agreement with us, we will give details of your account(s) and how you manage it/them to CRAs. If you do not make your loan repayments in full and on time, CRAs may record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs and FPAs (as defined below) to perform similar checks and to trace your whereabouts and recover debts that you owe. Records remain on file for 6 years after they are closed, whether settled by you or defaulted.
If you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect or identify fraud, we will record this and may also pass this information to FPAs and other organisations involved in crime and fraud prevention. See further information in the Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention Checks section below.
We may also disclose your personal information in the following circumstances:
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to companies within our corporate group, our contractors or third parties in connection with any of the above activities;
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to credit unions or potential lenders or underwriters in relation to your application to become a borrower;
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to credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies as described in this Privacy Policy;
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to third parties for marketing purposes, so that they might contact you with products and services which may be of interest to you. We will only disclose your personal information for marketing purposes with your consent, and only to third parties which we have selected as suitable for you; a list of the relevant third parties for marketing purposes can be found here:
We will only send you certain marketing emails or alerts if you have consented to receive this material. Where we have asked for your consent, we will only collect and process your personal information for marketing purposes if you have given your consent for us to do so.
- where we are required to do so by any applicable law, for example where instructed to do so by any governmental body or law enforcement agency;- to credit and/or collection agencies;
- to any third party which acquires or has entered into negotiations with us to acquire all or substantially all of our business and assets, in connection with the acquisition;
- to any third party who provides finance to us or has entered into negotiations with us to provide financing to us; and
- AccountScore Limited, to assist us with categorisation of your transaction data in order to provide you with the services.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third party service providers who process your personal data on our behalf to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Where you have given your consent for us to share your information with third parties for marketing purposes, but later change your mind, you should contact us and we will stop doing so as soon as is reasonably practicable.
Finally, we may also collect anonymised details about visitors to our website for the purposes of aggregate statistics or reporting purposes. However, no single individual will be identifiable from the anonymised details we collect for these purposes.
6. HOW LONG WE WILL STORE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. Most account records are usually retained for 6 years after the relevant files are closed, whether as a result of full settlement by you or defaulted. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our retention policy which you can request from us by contacting us.
7. TRANSFERRING YOUR INFORMATION INTERNATIONALLY
Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the UK or the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the UK or the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to 'international frameworks' intended to enable secure data sharing. Contact details and the fair processing notices for the fraud prevention agency we use (Cifas) can be found below at the Credit Reference And Fraud Prevention Checks section.
We may also separately transfer your personal data outside the UK or the European Economic Area (“EEA”) for other operational reasons. For example, your personal data may be processed by staff of Persistent Systems outside the EEA, namely in India, who work for us. Agreements with Persistent Systems and our partners and contractors outside the UK and the EEA are in place to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to secure data and the transfer is subject to the safeguard of the UK approved Standard Contractual Clauses which can be found here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32010D0087&rid=4 . We impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data, including but not limited to Persistent Systems, to protect your personal data to the standard required in the UK and the European Economic Area. Such transfer is subject to the aforementioned safeguard of the UK approved Standard Contractual Clauses or the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and us or the implementation of pre-contractual measures taken at your request or the transfer is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract concluded in your interest between us and our partners. We may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing.
8. DIRECT MARKETING - YOUR RIGHT TO OPT OUT
When you apply for a product through us, we ask you if you would like to receive direct marketing from us, through email, telephone or SMS.
If you do not want to receive direct marketing from us, we offer simple options to opt-out anytime. You can update your preferences in your online portal, you can, when available, click the unsubscribe link on any marketing emails we send to you, or you can email us at info@mycommunityfinance.co.uk.
If you unsubscribe from marketing communications, we will still send you statements and important information such as changes to your existing products and services to meet our legal and contractual obligations to you.
9. CREDIT REFERENCE AND FRAUD PREVENTION CHECKS
When you apply to Amplifi for a loan, Amplifi may check the following records about you and others:
- our own records;
- information in the public domain for the purpose of identifying any information relevant to your application, including but not limited to information you have made publicly available on social media or other websites;
- records held by credit reference agencies ("CRAs"). When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders. CRAs supply both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit and fraud prevention information with us and those at fraud prevention agencies ("FPAs").
We will make checks, such as assessing your loan application for credit and verifying agencies, to prevent and detect crime and money laundering. We may also make periodic searches at CRAs and FPAs to manage the financing and servicing of your loan.
- We and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by FPAs.
You can contact the CRAs currently operating in the UK. The information they hold may not be the same so it is worth contacting them all. They will charge you a small statutory fee.
Their contact details are:
-TransUnion LLC, Consumer Services Team, PO Box 491, Leeds, LS3 1WZ or call 0870 0601414, and you can view the TransUnion Bureau privacy notice at www.transunion.co.uk/legal/privacy-centre;
- Iovation Limited (Data Protection Representative), 29/30 Fitzroy Square, London, W1T 6LQ or email uk@iovation.com, and you can view their privacy notice at www.transunion.com/privacy/iovation;
- Equifax PLC, Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 2001, Bradford, BD1 5US or call 0870 010 0583 or log on to www.myequifax.co.uk; and
- Experian, Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF or call 0844 4818000 or log on to www.experian.co.uk. Their privacy notice can be accesses here: https://www.experian.co.uk/legal/crain/.
The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with fraud prevention agencies, who will use it to prevent fraud and money laundering and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. Further details of how your information will be used by us and these fraud prevention agencies, and your data protection rights is set out in the full notice made available by Cifas and can be found at www.cifas.org.uk/fpn.
10. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including:
- the right to request access to your personal data;
- the right to request correction of your personal data;
- the right to request erasure of your personal data;
- the right to object to processing of your personal data;
- the right to request restriction of processing your personal data;
- the right to request transfer of your personal data; and
- the right to withdraw consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us or our DPO using the details above.
This page was last updated in December 2021