Privacy Policy

This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes in detail the privacy practices of Lending Stream, LLC (“Lending Stream”), with regard to the personal information that is collected from you, or that third parties provide to Lending Stream about you, including personal information collected or provided on the Lending Stream website, www.lendingstream.co.uk (the “Website”). “You” or “your” means you as a participant in, or as a user of, Lending Stream’s Website or any service provided by Lending Stream. “We,” “our” or “us” means Lending Stream and its affiliates. For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998, the data controller is Lending Stream.

Safe Harbor

The servers that support the Website, as well as many of our operations, are located in the United States. Thus, personal information you provide to us may be transferred to and stored in the United States. We adhere to the US-EU Safe Harbor Privacy Principles with respect to the use and processing in the United States of personal data that we obtain from residents of the EU, and have self-certified our adherence with U.S. Department of Commerce. For further background about the US-EU Safe Harbor Program, please refer to the U.S. Department of Commerce's website at http://www.export.gov/safeharbor, or contact us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Your consent

Please read the loan terms and conditions in conjunction with this Privacy Policy, which provide further details of the ways we collect and use your personal information.

By using this Website, submitting your personal information or using our services you consent to our terms of use and this Privacy Policy, and to the use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described herein. In addition, we reserve the right to use and disclose all information that is not in individually identifiable form as we deem appropriate in our sole discretion.

We give you choices about the ways we use and share your personal information, and we’ll respect the choices you make.

Collecting your information

We’ll collect only as much information as we need for specific, identified purposes, and we won’t use it for other purposes without obtaining your consent. We’ll take appropriate steps to make sure the personal information in our records is accurate. We collect the following types of information about you:

name, email address, mailing address, phone number, employer name, take-home pay, and banking information (such as bank routing number, debit card number and account number). Please see below for times when we will collect this type of information.
information collected directly from you through your online application, information collected through on-line forms or entries on our lead providers'/affiliates' websites, or information you provide when you contact our customer services department;
your telephone communications with us and our customer services department, which may be monitored and recorded;
information about your transactions including loan balances;
information from outside sources such as credit reference agencies and customer service providers regarding credit worthiness and credit history;
information about your visits to our Website;
information that is collected when you use the Website, which may be used by us to identify you and validate your use of the Website for fraud prevention purposes;
information about you when you use our feedback form;
information regarding your inquiries about our affiliate program; and
information about your computer, including your IP address, operating system and browser type. This is statistical data about browsing actions and patterns and is not in individually identifiable form; and automatic information obtained by using "cookies" when your browser accesses our Website and when you log-in. See the “Cookies” section below for more information.

Information about third parties

We may also request that you provide details of individuals who are able to act as referees on your behalf by verifying some of the personal information you provide about yourself. The information we collect about these third parties include their name, address, and phone number.

From time to time we may also ask you to recommend people who might be interested in hearing about our products and services or provide you a way to send them blog posts and provide their contact details to us. We will send your friend a one-time email inviting them to visit our site. We store this information for the sole purpose of inviting him or her to visit the site. This is completely voluntary and all personal information collected in relation to such people will be dealt with in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Your friend may contact us at customercare@lendingstream.co.uk to request that we remove this information from our database.

When you give us information about another individual you must confirm, and warrant to us, that they have appointed you (1) to act for them, (2) to consent to the processing of their personal information and to the transfer of their information abroad, and (3) to receive on their behalf any data protection notices. You also consent to us informing any third party that you nominate or recommend that you have provided their details to us.

Using your information

We may use your personal information for a number of purposes including:

in the normal course of our business to provide you with the services or products you request such as processing loan transactions and updating your account records;
to contact third parties, such as your employer, who you have nominated to verify information about yourself;
to enhance your experience of using our Website or our services;
for conducting statistical analysis;
to identify you when you contact us or visit our Website;
to identify which of our products, or our partners' products, might interest you;
to prevent and detect fraud, this may involve the use of voice detection technology to analyse recordings of your telephone calls with us;
for other regulatory checks including credit assessment; and
for editorial or feedback purposes for our advertisers.
Aggregated information about users for editorial or feedback purposes for our advertisers.

Sharing your information

We may act as brokers as well as direct lenders, and our products and services may sometimes be provided in conjunction with our business partners. Thus, it may be necessary to disclose your information to those partners to provide you with the products or services you request.

We may also share the personal information you submit with our associated companies (which includes any company linked to us in some way by common ownership or management) for the purposes of: (a) the provision of products and service you request; (b) consumer profiling and market research; and (c) to contact you by post, phone or electronically about related products and services, offers and events, unless you opt out as described below (see the Marketing and Opt Out Rights section). A list of associated companies is available on request by contacting Lending Stream directly via the contact details provided below.

If you consent, we may also share your personal information with selected third parties who may use it to contact you by post, telephone, email, SMS or other reasonable methods in relation to offers they feel might interest you, to seek your feedback, suggestions or opinions on current products, or for editorial, survey, research and product development purposes.

We may also share your personal information with third parties under the following circumstances:

with lenders, credit reference agencies, customer service providers and collection agencies. We have trusted relationships with these carefully selected third parties who perform services on our behalf. All service providers are bound by contract to maintain the security of your personal information. Credit reference agencies may add to their records about you, information about our search of their records and your application with us, and this will be seen by other organisations that make searches;
with a purchaser, in the event our business or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party (in which case personal information held about customers will be one of the transferred assets);
in order to enforce any of our terms and conditions;
with fraud prevention or law enforcement agencies, in the event false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified. We and other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example when checking details on applications for credit and credit related and other facilities; managing credit and credit related accounts or other facilities; recovering debt; checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance; and checking details of job applicants and employees. For further details of the relevant fraud prevention agencies please contact us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy;
with individuals who you nominate as your referees to verify certain information that you provide to us; and
if required or compelled to do so by any legal authority, as required by law or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on us.
with other third party service providers, who act as agents to perform tasks on behalf of and under the instructions of Lending Stream. These service providers must agree to use personal information only for the purposes for which they have been engaged by us and must either: (1) comply with the Safe Harbor Principles; (2) comply with another mechanism permitted by the European data protection law(s) for transfers and processing of personal information; or (3) agree to provide adequate protections for the personal information that are no less protective than those set forth in this Privacy Policy.

Cookies and Web Beacons

If enabled, we may place cookies on your machine that store small amounts of data on your computer about your visit to any of the pages of this Website. Cookies assist us in tracking which of our features appeal the most to you and what content you may have viewed on past visits. When you visit this site again, cookies can enable us to customize our content according to your preferences. These cookies do not track user information in a way that identifies your name, and all our cookie data is encrypted and cannot be read by other websites. To find out more about accepting or refusing cookies from www.allaboutcookies.org.

Third-party tracking utility companies also assist us in tracking Website activity and collecting Website analytics data. We do not share any personal information with these third parties, but our tracking utility company uses session ID, persistent cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site. The use of cookies by our third-party tracking utility companies is not covered by our Privacy Policy. We do not have access or control over these cookies.

We also use Google Analytics to collect non-personally identifiable information, in aggregate form, to understand website/page visit volumes in terms of source, geography, browser, etc.

Google Analytics employs a software technology called web beacons, that help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Web beacons are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users or responses to emails. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Web beacons cannot be disabled in same manner as cookies may. We do not tie the information gathered by web beacons to our customers’ personally identifiable information.

Transfers outside the EEA

Countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) are required to have similar standards for protecting your personal information. This is not always the case outside the EEA. Each time you apply for a loan, we may transfer your personal information outside the EEA (including to our associated companies in India and the USA). However, before doing so, we will ensure that there is adequate protection for personal data as required by the relevant Data Protection legislation.

Marketing and opt-out rights

By visiting our Website, you understand and agree that we may contact you via the phone number or e-mail address you enter on your loan application to assist you with your loan or to discuss other products and services that Lending Stream may provide for you. You may opt-out of receiving these marketing communications from us or from our associated companies by responding to any of our e-mail communications with “remove” in the subject line or by sending us an e-mail to customercare@lendingstream.co.uk .

If you opt-out of our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, we will honour such choice within 10 business days. We reserve the right to take reasonable steps to authenticate your identity with respect to any such request or other inquiry.

As noted above, if you consent to allow us to share your information with selected third parties, you may receive follow-up contact and offers from third party companies and, while we only work with selected partners, we are not responsible for the services or representations of these third parties. To opt-out of receiving further marketing emails, calls, or SMS messages from such third party, please contact the third party directly.

Security and retention of information

We are aware of the importance of the data we collect from you and therefore we use advanced technology to protect your information. We take reasonable precautions to protect personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

For example, we store data in encrypted form on computers and control access via secure web pages. We also employ firewalls and other security technologies to protect our servers from external attack. In addition, we train our employees in the proper handling of personal information and when we use other companies to provide services for us, we require them to protect the confidentiality of personal information they receive.

When you enter certain, more-sensitive information (such as your bank routing or checking account number) on the application form, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

We only keep your personal information for as long as necessary, for the purposes for which it was collected, to provide you with services and to conduct our legitimate business interests or where otherwise required by law. In addition, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the data we collect is relevant for its intended purposes, is reliable for its intended use, and is accurate, complete, and current.

Access to your data

You may request a copy of the information we hold on you by contacting us as described at the end of this Privacy Policy and requesting further details. There is a charge for this service (usually £10) to help us cover the administrative costs of responding to your request. You will also need to provide identification so that we may verify that you authorized to access the personal information you have requested.

If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update or remove it by making the change within the edit your profile section of the site or by emailing us at customercare@lendingstream.co.uk

Blog

If you submit or create blog on this Website, you should be aware that any personal information you submit can be read, collected, or used by other users of these blogs, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personal information you choose to submit in these forums.

Customer Testimonials

We post customer testimonials on our Website which may contain personally identifiable information. We do obtain the customer’s consent via email prior to posting the testimonial to post their name along with their testimonial.

Third party links in our website

Our Website may contain links to third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these third-party websites, please note that such websites have their own terms and privacy policies, and that we are not responsible or liable for any of the practices of these third-party sites.

Age

To register with us you must be 18 years of age or older.

Changes in this privacy statement

If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the home page, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.

Enforcement

As part of our annual Safe Harbor re-certification process, Lending Stream will periodically review this Privacy Policy for accuracy, as well as for conformity with the Safe Harbor Principles and applicable data privacy and protection laws. If you have any questions, complaints or disputes regarding the manner in which we handle or protect your personal information, please contact us at the contact information below. Lending Stream will promptly investigate and attempt to resolve complaints and disputes in a manner that complies with the principles described in this Privacy Policy.

With respect to any complaints related to this Privacy Policy that cannot be resolved through our internal process, we agree to cooperate with the relevant European data protection authorities, including the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, to resolve any such disputes. In the event that a relevant data protection authority or we conclude that we did not comply with this Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate steps to address any adverse effects and assure our future compliance.

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns about the use of your personal information as described above, please contact us at Lending Stream LLC, Wisteria Cavendish House, 369 Burnt Oak Broadway, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 5AW | Credit License Number : 0620194 0845 351 1482(Calls cost 3.8p per minute from a BT landline; mobiles and other providers may cost more) | info@lendingstream.co.uk | Copyright © Lending Stream

This Privacy Policy last amended: 22 November 2011