Privacy Policy

Please read our Privacy Policy carefully before using this website www.lowell.co.uk ("the Website"). Please note that in this Privacy Policy “Lowell”, “we”, “us” and “our” means Lowell Financial Limited. “Group” means Lowell Financial Limited and its parent, holding, associated and group companies.

Lowell Group takes privacy very seriously. The Privacy Policy together with our Website Terms and Conditions sets out what sort of information we collect and hold about you, how that information is collected, how we use your information and how information may be corrected and/or updated.

For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 the Data Controller is Lowell Financial Ltd of Enterprise House, 1 Apex View, Leeds LS11 9BH.

Information we may collect

Lowell collects information about you through your use of the Website, we also collect information when you phone us or email or write to us. We also receive information about you from public data sources or third parties such as credit reference agencies or from companies that we have either purchased your account from or are collecting on behalf of.

Typically, the information that we will collect will include your name, address, telephone number, email address and any information relating to your account.

If you make a payment via our pay online pages, we will ask you to provide personal information including but not limited to the Lowell reference number to which the payment relates, the cardholder’s name and address, card details such as card number, valid from and expiry date, issue number and security number, as well as the payment value.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

where you have requested information or asked us to contact you, we may use your personal information to gather the information requested and respond to your request or to contact you if you have asked us to do so;
to process payments made via our Website and to service, update and administer your account. For example, where you make a payment via our pay online pages we will apply this to your account to reduce the outstanding balance;
to provide you with a helpful and effective service;
for debt collection purposes and other business and client communication purposes;
to trace customers;
to prevent money laundering and/or fraud;
to help us take decisions about you and your account;
to fulfil our obligations to our clients, for example we may provide them with details of your payment history, account usage, changes of name and address;
if you provide us with your email address, we may use it to contact you about your account;
marketing purposes.
We will not sell or rent your personal information to third parties.
Telephone conversations are recorded in order to offer you additional security, resolve complaints and improve our quality and service standards. Conversations may also be recorded for training purposes.
To notify you about changes to our service.

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose your personal information to any member of Lowell Group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If Lowell or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Lowell Group, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
to employees, sub-contractors and third parties who act for us for the purposes set out in this policy or for other purposes approved by you or to those who are contracted to provide us with services, such as administration support or website services. For example, if you make a payment via our pay online pages your details will be passed to our payment service provider for processing;
to credit reference agencies to ensure responsible lending and the accuracy of data. We may provide such agencies with information about the behaviour of your account including changes to your personal information, such as previous or subsequent names. Other lenders may use this to make decisions on future applications for credit;
if we have (or believe we have) a duty to do so, or the law allows us to;
when we investigate a complaint relating to a debt you owe we may need to share personal information with our client (your creditor);
if you apply to work for us, we will use the information supplied to us to process your application and to monitor recruitment statistics. Where we want to disclose information to a third party, for example if we want to take up a reference or obtain a “disclosure” from the Credit Reference Bureau, we will not do so without informing you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law. We may provide your information to third parties to trace your whereabouts or for debt collection purposes.

Where we store your personal data and security

We take the security and disclosure of personal information very seriously and the data that we collect from you will be held securely at our main trading address.

All data collected through this Website that is stored electronically, is stored on secure servers, and we have stringent security and confidentiality procedures covering the storage and disclosure of such information, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Any payment transactions will be processed using Secure socket Layer (SSL) and encrypted using 128-bit encryption which is the most secure commercially available. We employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

IP Addresses

Like all websites our servers automatically collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

Cookies

“Cookies” are small pieces of information sent by a web server (such as that used to run this Website) to your computer, which are then stored on the computer’s hard drive. Although cookies contain identifying information, they do not contain any information that identifies you personally, but they allow us to recognise you when you return to our Website.

Lowell do not use persistent cookies i.e. those that are pushed out to a users machine and stored. This website uses the following cookies:

Cookie Type	Cookie Name	Essential to Website operation	Purpose
Website	ASP.Net_SessionId	Yes	These are unique ids given to every user to help the website maintain session information for the Microsoft .NET framework that runs our website. These cookies are deleted as soon as you leave the website.
Google Analytics	_utma _utmb _utmc _utmz	No	These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use the website. We use the information to compile reports and to help improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

You can change your browser settings so that cookies are not accepted. If you do this, you may lose some of the functionality of this website, including the use of the secure area of the Website.

For further information about cookies and how to disable them please go to: www.aboutcookies.org.

Access to information and updating information

The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you the right to access information held about you.

Your right of access can be exercised by writing to us at the address below with a request and enclosing the required £10 fee and providing sufficient evidence for us to identify you (i.e. a copy of your passport or driving licence together with your signature and current address).

Also if you believe that any of the personal information we hold about you needs to be updated or is incorrect you can ask us to update your information or correct any mistakes by writing to:

Attn: Data Protection Officer, Lowell Financial Ltd, Enterprise House, 1 Apex View, Leeds LS11 9BH.

Consent and changes to our privacy policy

By using this Website, writing or emailing us or contacting us by phone you consent to the collection and use of your personal information as stated above.

We reserve the right to amend this policy from time to time and, if we do so, your continued use of the Website will be taken as acceptance of any such change. You should check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes made to this policy.

Transfer of data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA)

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside of the EEA. It may also be processed by staff operating outside of the EEA. If such transfer of data takes place we will ensure that the third party has the appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Links to other websites

We may provide links to other websites or resources for you to access at your sole discretion. We are not responsible for these external sites and do not endorse them. You are strongly advised to read the privacy statements on these linked sites as their privacy may differ from ours.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to:

By letter: Data Protection Officer, Lowell Financial Ltd, Enterprise House, 1 Apex View, Leeds LS11 9BH.

By email: enquiries@lowellgroup.co.uk.