Privacy Policy

Money and Me Solicitors Ltd (Money and Me) is a law firm specialising in providing legal services to individuals who have been mis-sold financial products.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we may collect about you, how it is used, what we do to keep it secure and how we store or dispose of it. We also explain your rights in respect of your personal information and how to contact us should this become necessary.

Money and Me operates www.moneyandmesolicitors.co.uk (Website) and manages several social media accounts, including Facebook, Linked-In and Google.

Unless stated otherwise, Money and Me is a data controller in respect of all personal data we collect about you, which means that we are responsible for ensuring that we do so in full compliance with the data protection legislation and all other related privacy laws.

THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT and ITS SOURCES

In order to provide you with the services you require, we may collect personal information about you when you visit our Website or during the course of our dealings with you in the form of telephone conversations, electronic, written and verbal communications. This may include, for example, your name, address, email address, phone number, date of birth, proof of identity and residency, financial information, directorships, shareholdings, and publicly available information. We may also collect sensitive information such as health data if it is relevant to your claim.

We may supplement the information that you provide with other information that we obtain as a result of our dealings with you, from others who act on your behalf or who have been involved in your financial affairs or relating to any claim you may wish to make such as your ceding scheme, financial advisers (including your IFA, or SIPP trustee) or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, or which we receive from other organisations such as experts and regulators.

Information about other people

If you provide information to us about any person other than yourself, you must ensure that they understand how their information will be used and that you are authorised to disclose it to us, and to consent to its use on their behalf, before doing so.

IP addresses

In order to understand how users use our Website and our services, we may collect IP addresses.

Cookies

In common with many other website operators, we may use standard technology called ‘cookies’ on our Website. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive and they are used to record how you navigate our Website on each visit.

Our cookies are used to enable us to develop our Website and to enable you to properly navigate it.  We use cookies to collect personal information to enable us to reflect our users interests and by noting who has seen which pages, properties and advertisements (including click through from emails), how frequently particular pages are visited and to enable us to determine the most popular areas of our Website. We may use cookies to enrich your experience of using this Website by allowing us to tailor what you see to what we have learned about your preferences during your visits to our Website.  Sometimes we may use services of third parties and they may use cookies on our behalf in order to provide their services.

You may also get cookies (including Flash cookies) from our Partners and advertisers if you click on their links or adverts.  You should check their privacy and security policies to understand how they use these.

Preventing use of cookies

Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser to prevent cookies being stored.  With experience, you can usually choose to switch off all cookies or to allow only certain ‘trusted’ sites to place cookies.

For further information on cookies and Flash cookies and how to switch them off see the Information Commissioner’s website at www.ico.gov.uk or visit www.allaboutcookies.org or www.aboutcookies.org.

HOW WE WILL USE YOUR INFORMATION

All personal information that we obtain about you and/or any other person whose details you provide will be held, used, and protected by us in accordance with the latest data protection law, , this Privacy Policy and any Terms of Engagement we agree with you. We will primarily use the personal information:

• for registration and general administration (including verification, vetting and security checking)
• to provide the legal services you request from us
• to administer our business, including charging, accounting, collection, and support services
• to obtain information from third parties who may have had some involvement in the subject matter of any claim you may have and those who may become involved in the claim
• to ensure appropriate documentation is prepared for any claim(s) we are dealing with for you
• to notify you of our progress in respect of the legal services we provide to you
• to comply with our legal and other regulatory obligations as a responsible law firm
• to respond to queries and complaints
• to detect, prevent and respond to potential fraud or other illegal activities.
• to bill for our legal services and process payment
• for record keeping purposes
• for market research and marketing purposes
• to improve the functionality of our website

With your consent, we will use the information we hold to inform you of services, events, newsletters and other information and opportunities that may be of interest to you.

Consent and lawful processing of personal data

The legal basis for the collection and processing of your personal data is:

• for administration and service delivery: that it is necessary to fulfil the contract that you are going to enter into or have entered into with us

• for regulatory matters: that it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation to which we, as a responsible law firm, are subject

• for direct marketing: that you have given your consent/or we have legitimate interests that do not override your data rights.

• in all other cases: that it is necessary for our legitimate interests which are to ensure our services meet or exceed our legal and regulatory obligations and/or to secure payment of compensation and this does not prejudice or harm your rights and freedoms

Disclosing your personal information

If you make a claim using our services, we will have to provide a lot of the information we hold (and which relates to the claim) to those against whom the claim is to be made.  Where they are no longer trading, this will be the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.  

We may also provide certain information about you and your claim to third parties such as Wybract Ltd (a third party expert acting on our behalf in respect of your claim), a court, a mediator, an ombudsman, lawyers, barristers, expert witnesses, consultants, auditors, professional advisors, and insurers.

Occasionally, we may need to appoint other organisations to carry out some activities on our behalf.  These will include for example, enquiry agents, couriers and service providers that provide telephone call handling services as well as technology hosts, printing companies and mailing houses.

Where required to do so by law or by a regulator, we may provide some of your personal information to appropriate regulators.

In these circumstances, we will ensure that personal information is properly protected and that it is only used in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable data protection legislation.

FURTHER CLAIMS

From time to time, Money and Me, may contact you to advise you of industry developments that could lead to further claims for redress and would like to contact you via by post, telephone, SMS, email or by social media.  

If you do not wish to receive industry updates and information about potential new claims, please email us at compliance@moneyandmesolicitors.co.uk 

SECURITY

We take the security of personal information seriously.  We have security procedures and technology in place to ensure that our paper and computer systems and databases are protected against unauthorised use, loss and damage.

MONITORING

We will monitor and record telephone calls and any live chats for security purposes, to verify and demonstrate compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations and to improve the quality of the services we provide to you.

USE OF YOUR INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN UNION

Other than in the context of any products or services we provide on your instructions, we would not usually expect to transfer any of your personal information outside of the European Economic Area. 

However, if we do transfer your personal information to other territories, we will take proper steps to ensure that the information is properly protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy and Data Protection Legislation which may change from time to time.

DATA RETENTION

Website data will be retained for 12 months and all other personal information will normally be retained for seven years after your last engagement with us or the final decision in any claim you may have (whichever is later).  After that period, all of your personal information will be permanently deleted.  We retain your data for record-keeping purposes only, unless during this period we identify further potential claims, in which case we may re-contact you.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy laws and practice are constantly developing and we aim to meet high professional standards.  Our policies and procedures are, therefore, under continual review. We may, from time to time, update our security and privacy policies.  We will put a notice on our website informing you that we have updated our Privacy Policy and you can always check this page periodically to see our latest policy. In the event you have a Privacy Policy which differs from the version published on our website, the website version will prevail.

UPDATING AND CORRECTING INFORMATION

We encourage you to promptly update your personal information if it changes.  If you delay, this could slow down any claim we are handling for you.

You can update or correct your personal information by contacting us in writing or by email (see the section ‘How to contact us’ below). Please include your name, address and/or email address when you contact us as this helps us to ensure that we accept amendments only from the correct person.

If you are providing updates or corrections about another person, we may require you to provide us with proof that you are authorised to provide that information to us.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have a number of legal rights in respect of your personal data.  These include:

• access. The right to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you.  The same right applies to any other person whose personal data you provide to us.  We will require proof of identity and proof of authority if the request comes from someone other than the person whose data we are asked to provide.  This will ensure we only provide information to the correct person.  We normally expect to respond to requests within 28 days of receiving them.
• withdraw consent to direct marketing.  You can exercise this right at any time and can update your preferences yourself or ask us to do it for you.  See section ‘Updating and correcting information’ above for details.
• withdraw consent to other processing.  Where the only legal basis for our processing your personal data is that we have your consent to do so, you may withdraw your consent to that processing at any time and we will have to stop processing your personal data.  Please note, this will only affect new activity and does not mean that processing carried out before you withdrew your consent is unlawful.
• rectification.  If you consider any of your personal data is inaccurate, see section ‘Updating and correcting information’ above for details.
• restriction.  In limited circumstances you may be able to require us to restrict our processing of your personal data.  For example, if you consider what we hold is inaccurate and we disagree, the processing may be restricted until the accuracy has been verified
• erasure.  In some circumstances, for example, where we have no legal basis for retaining your personal data, you may be entitled to require us to delete your personal data.
• portability.  Where you have provided personal data electronically to us, you may be entitled to request us to provide that data to you or to have us transmit it to another organisation.
• to complain to the Information Commissioner.   If you have any concerns about the way we process your personal data, we would prefer you to let us know so that we can try to resolve the matter.  However, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner which is the supervisory authority in the United Kingdom. You can do this by calling their helpline on 0303 123 1113. However, Money and Me would like the chance to deal with your complaint initially therefore would appreciate if you contacted us in the first instance using the contact details set out below.

  HOW TO CONTACT US