Privacy Notice

The Embark Pensions Privacy Notice applies to:

  • Financial advisers
  • Customers
  • Prospective customers
  • Former customers

of Embark Pensions (a trading style of EBS Pensions Limited and Embark Services Limited). EBS Pensions Limited and Embark Services Limited are wholly owned subsidiaries of Embark Group Limited and Lloyds Banking Group. This details how we will collect and process the personal data that we hold about you and your rights under the UK GDPR and UK Data Protection Act 2018 in respect of the data held.

Embark Services Limited will be the Data Controller for the Hornbuckle Mitchell SIPP; the Hornbuckle Mitchell FIPP; the Private Pension; the Hornbuckle Mitchell Private Pension; and the Freedom SIPP as defined under UK Data Protection legislation and regulation.

The lawful basis and purpose for the processing of your data

We will only process your personal data where we have a legal basis for doing so under the UK GDPR. Here are our lawful reasons for processing:

Contract:

We need to collect and use your personal information to be able to provide you with and administer the Embark product that you want to open and use. This includes your contact details and bank account information.

Consent:

We rely on explicit consent to process sensitive personal data. We need your permission to record information about any health issue or other vulnerability that affects how you interact with Embark. This information informs our staff the best way to support a client with additional needs. For example, we may wish to record that an individual has dementia so that we know to provide additional context at the beginning of a letter or phone call.

We also rely on consent to send marketing about Embark products and services to financial advisers.

Consent can be withdrawn at any time and once we receive this retraction, we will cease to process your data for this purpose immediately.

Legal Obligation:

We must collect and process your data to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. For example, we need to check your identity, address, and source of funds to comply with Money Laundering Regulations. If you are suffering from serious ill-health and wish to withdraw your pension funds early tax-free, we will need to record this and evidence from a registered medical practitioner in line with the UK Government Pensions Tax Manual.

Legitimate Interests:

We rely on legitimate interests for the following purposes:

  • Training and monitoring
  • Testing and improving our services

The information that we collect

We will collect personal data from you at the outset of your relationship with us, from your application as well as from other third parties such as your financial adviser and any providers that are transferring money or assets to us on your instruction.

Embark obtain personal data from you and other third parties you instruct on your behalf throughout the course of your relationship with us.

We need to collect and use your personal information to be able to provide you with the product(s) that you want to use, and to administer them. We cannot provide the service if you don’t give us the information we ask for. This personal data will include:

  • Contact information such as name and address, telephone numbers and email addresses.
  • Information from your contact with us; voice recordings from telephone calls, letters and emails. We also record your contact preferences so that we know how you would prefer to communicate with us.
  • Socio-demographic information; age, employment status, profession, earnings, gender, other sources of wealth.
  • Family circumstances information; marital status, beneficiary information.
  • Transactional information; account transactions, access to our online client portals.
  • Legal; national identifiers, copy documents relating to your identity, nationality and citizenship such as birth certificate, passport, proof of address documents, marriage certificates.
  • Information relating to your health, such as a medical condition or disability, or personal circumstances, such as a bereavement, if it is necessary to support you in your communications with Embark.

Embark receives limited personal data from other organisations, such as fraud agencies, to meet regulatory obligations around preventing financial crime and to administer your account.

Sharing your personal data

Embark may share your personal data with the following organisations. These data transfers will only be completed when strictly necessary and any transfers outside of the UK will only take place when we are certain that the personal data is afforded the same level of protection as is required under UK Data Protection legislation.

  • Other companies in the Embark Group who provide administration and oversight services. For example, our legal or software development teams.
  • Credit reference agencies to check your identity, address, and source of funds, and to prevent fraud. Any checks performed may be recorded on your credit history.
  • Any governmental, legal, or regulatory body if required to do so by applicable law and regulation. For example, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
  • Your appointed financial adviser, third parties appointed by your financial adviser, third party investment managers, and product providers with whom you or your Financial Adviser instructs us to invest.
  • Companies which provide services in connection with the administration of your account. For example, maintaining our client database or securely storing files.

We will otherwise keep your personal information confidential and never use it for any other purpose or pass your details to any third parties without your knowledge or consent.

Retention of your personal data

We will retain your personal data for no longer than is necessary to provide the services under the Terms and Conditions applicable to the account and to meet any legal or regulatory obligations that may apply. Usually, your personal data will be kept for no longer than seven years after your end of relationship with Embark. However, we may keep your data for longer if we cannot delete it for legal, regulatory, or technical reasons.

If we store data on you relating to a support need that you have, eg. Having had a recent stroke, this information will be destroyed when one of the following conditions is met:

  • You withdraw consent for Embark to hold this personal data. You can contact us to do so.
  • You end your relationship with Embark.
  • Embark become aware that the support is no longer required.

Your Data Protection Rights

You have a number of rights over your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To Enact one of your subject rights please contact Embark.

  1. The right to request a copy of the personal information we hold on you. When you request this information, this is known as making a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR). In most cases, this will be free of charge, however in some limited circumstances, for example, repeated requests for further copies, we may apply an administration fee.
  2. The right to data portability, where Embark can have personal information we hold about you transferred securely to another service provider in electronic form.
  3. The right to have any inaccurate personal information corrected.
  4. The right to have any personal information erased if there is no lawful reason for Embark to keep it. This is sometimes known as the right to be forgotten. You can also withdraw your consent to process any personal data where this is our lawful reason to collect and process it.
  5. The right to object for example, where we are relying on legitimate interest as our lawful basis (as detailed earlier in this notice). We are only required to uphold this right where we do not have compelling grounds to continue the processing, having assessed it against the reasons for your objection.
  6. The right to restrict some processing, for example, you can ask us to stop processing for some activities while you are waiting for data to be corrected or have objected and are waiting for us to assess whether we have compelling grounds to continue the processing. This right only applies in limited circumstances.

Embark do not conduct any automated processing of personal data that produces legal or significant effects so the UK GDPR right relating to decisions based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces a significant effect does not apply.

Important Information

If you have any questions regarding how we use the data that we collect, please contact:

The Group Data Protection Officer
The Embark Group
100 Cannon Street
London
EC4N 6EU

If you are not satisfied with any aspect of how we have managed your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office. For further details of your rights under the UK’s data protection legislation and regulation please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office here.

By signing our product application form, you are agreeing to the use of your Personal Information for the purposes and on the terms set out above.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. Please view our Cookies Policy here.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

Any changes we make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Notice are welcomed and should be addressed to [email protected].