Privacy Policy

For the purposes of this policy "you" or "your" means you as a user of the App Site or as a participant in the Services and/or a user of the Services Sites (as defined below). "We", "our" or "us" means GAIN Credit LLC (trading as Lending Stream) of Lending Stream, PO Box 10756, LEICESTER, LE3 4GX, and its affiliates.

Personal Data, Data Processor and Data Controller have the meanings given to such terms under the Data Protection Act 2018.

This privacy policy (policy) aims to give you information on how Gain Credit LLC and its affiliates may collect and process your Personal Data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website as specified below. 

This policy, your credit agreement and any additional terms of use incorporated by reference into this policy, together (our Terms) applies to your use of any of the services accessible through the www.lendingstream.co.uk (Our Site), unless otherwise stated that a separate privacy policy or use of information statement applies to a particular Service, in which case that privacy policy only applies.

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. We give you choices about the ways we use and share your Personal Data, and we'll respect the choices you make.

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), the data controller is GAIN Credit LLC. GAIN Credit LLC is a registered Data Controller and details of our notification to the regulator for data protection, may be found in the Information Commissioner's Office Public Register of Data Controllers at ​​​​ www.ico.org.uk under registration number Z2752028.

We may collect and process the following data about you:

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

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. However, we will only disclose your information to such third parties where we have your express consent to do so via an 'opt in' mechanism on our website or other similar channels.

We may also share the Personal Data you submit with our associated group 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, through the consent expressed via an 'opt in' mechanism(see the Marketing and Opt Out Rights section).

If you consent via the opt in process, we may also share your Personal Data 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, products that may suit your needs, to seek your feedback, suggestions or opinions on current products, or for editorial, survey, research and product development purposes. The following list contains the names of third parties with whom we may share such information for purposes of providing you with alternative loan offers or other products that may be suitable for you:

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

Please note that for full details  on how we may use your information to determine and/or provide provision of loan facilities you should read the Use of Information Statement contained in your pre-contractual loan documentation.

In order to process your application we will supply your Personal Data to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and they will give us information about you, such as about your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace and recover debts and prevent criminal activity.

We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations.

The identities of the CRAs, and the ways in which they use and share Personal Data, are explained in more detail at https://www.transunion.co.uk/crain and http://www.experian.co.uk/crain.

We may ask for your consent to share your personal details with Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) for the purpose of securely accessing bank transaction data, which will enable us to process your loan application. We will share the following information about you with the AISP: name, email address, mobile phone number, and bank name.

If we are granted your consent, we will obtain one-time access to your bank transaction data for the last 365 days. The bank transaction data will be used in performing affordability analysis and will assist us in determining if the loan is suitable for you. It will also be used for future analysis and optimizing our affordability assessment. We will use the following AISP to provide this service: consents.online (Consents Online Ltd).

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 Data you provide about yourself. The information we will request about these third parties will include their name, address and phone number.

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of Our Sites. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you use the App or browse the App Site and also allows us to improve Our Sites. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, see our cookie policy.

By visiting our App, Our Sites and/or the App Site through the express consent via an 'opt in' mechanism available, 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 GAIN Credit LLC 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 use the unsubscribe options provided in the email and SMS communications received by you or go to our Contact Us page.

If you opt-out of our use of your Personal Data for marketing purposes, we will make reasonable efforts to 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.​​​​​​

Sometimes we use your Personal Data in automated processes to make decisions about you, such as credit scoring. We might also use automated processes to create a profile of you. We do this to help ensure decisions are made accurately, fairly and efficiently and to offer you products and services.

Underwriting:

We use automated decision making using your Personal Data to create a profile of you for credit scoring - a method which predicts your credit worthiness based on your financial profile.

To carry out credit scoring we use information you give to us, information we obtain from credit reference agencies, and details about how you have used other products and services you have with us. In some cases we will also use external data sources for credit scoring(refer to the Credit Reference Agencies section above). We analyse this information to identify a credit score based on how likely it is that debts will be re-paid.

We use credit scoring to make the following decisions about you: whether we enter into a contract to provide a product or service to you; whether to adjust products or services you have to pre-approve any suitable products or services for you; and in some cases where we need to recover a debt from you.

Marketing:

We want you to get the most relevant information about products and services at the right time. The most effective way for us to do this is to use automated processes to create a profile of you for marketing. To carry out marketing profiling we use information you give to us, details about how you have used other products and services you have with us and any feedback you have given us, information we have obtained from credit reference agencies, Social networking platforms and information from other companies we are partnering with.

We use processes to analyse this information to decide what products and services to offer to you and to prioritise the marketing messages you receive by assessing your eligibility for those products and services; assessing how likely they are to be useful for you; and deciding how likely you are to respond.

Data Retention:

We keep the Personal Data of customers and visitors for a minimum of six years after closure of your account or from the date you last used one of our services. We may hold information relating to loan accounts falling under the non-Personal Data category for longer where necessary for active or potential legal proceedings, to resolve or defend claims, and for making remediation payments.

Access to your Personal Data:

When we receive any request to access or update your Personal Data, we shall first take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access or otherwise taking any action. This is important to safeguard your information from fraud and identity compromises.

Data Portability

Where Personal Data is processed by us through electronic means and in a structured and commonly used format, you shall have the right to obtain a copy of such data in an electronic or structured format that is commonly used and allows for further use by you, the Data Subject. The exercise of this right shall primarily take into account the right of the Data Subject to have control over his or her Personal Data being processed based on consent or contract, for commercial purpose, or through automated means subject to data protection obligations under DPA. For any further information please Contact Us.

Your Privacy rights:

You have the right to withdraw your consent for our processing of your Personal Data, the right to object to how we use your Personal Data and the right to see what Personal Data we hold about you. In addition, you can ask us to correct inaccuracies, delete or restrict Personal Data Personal Data subject to our legal and contractual obligations.

To make enquires for further information about exercising any of your rights in this Privacy Notice please contact our Data Protection Officer through our Contact Us page or by post: Lending Stream, PO Box 10756, LEICESTER, LE3 4GX.

You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office, at https://ico.org.uk.

Use of site by children

We do not sell products or provide services for purchase by children aged less than 18, nor do we market to them by any means. We collect data about all users of and visitors to our website regardless of age, through cookies, and we anticipate that some of those users and visitors will be children. Such visitors including children may be able to visit other parts of the website and may be subjected to the available online financial promotions or marketing contents.

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 Data from loss, misuse and unauthorised 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 Data and when we use other companies to provide services for us, we require them to protect the confidentiality of Personal Data they receive.

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

We only keep your Personal Data for as long as necessary (see the Data Retention section), 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, and is accurate, and up to date.

If you submit or create a blog on our App Site or Our Sites, you should be aware that any Personal Data 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 Data you choose to submit in these forums.

We post customer testimonials, which may contain Personal Data, on the App Site, banners and/or Our Sites as well as some other websites with GAIN Credit LLC or its related brands' presence.

Our App, Our Sites and/or App Site 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.

Gain Credit LLC operates globally with affiliates and vendor partners including third countries, which means Personal Data may be stored and processed (for example stored in a data center) by us or our service providers for the provision of services relevant to you. By providing Personal Data for any of the purposes stated above, you acknowledge that your Personal Data may be transferred to or stored in third countries outside of UK and we will take necessary measures to safeguard Personal Data in accordance with the contractual obligations and data protection legislation applicable to the provision of services. Your Personal Data will only be transferred if we or our vendor partners

Please note that our affiliates Global Analytics India Private Limited (GAI),GAIN Credit Holdings, Inc and GAIN Credit, Inc also adhere to the above said principles.

GAIN Credit LLC is committed to applying the GDPR/DPA Principles; Accountability for onward transfer; Security; Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation; Access; Recourse; Enforcement and Liability to all UK Personal Data. All employees of GAIN Credit LLC are required to comply with the GDPR and DPA . GAIN Credit LLC is potentially liable for onward transfers of Personal Data to our vendor partners existing in third countries outside of UK.

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you. The new terms may be displayed on-screen and you may be required to read and accept them to continue your use of the Application and Our Sites.

This policy was last updated on 12.07.2023