PRIVACY POLICY

1. Important information and About Us

Accident Claims Specialists Ltd is data controller and is responsible for your personal data (referred to as "ACS", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy). This privacy policy gives you information about how we collect and use your personal data through your use of this website including any data you may have provided when you made your enquiry with our Lead Provider.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and take our responsibilities regarding the security of user information very seriously. This privacy statement sets out how we comply with both UK and European Union data protection requirements.

This website and our services are not intended for children, and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. For any queries about this privacy policy, including requests to exercise your legal rights, please refer to section 15 (Contact Information).

2. What is Personal data?

Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) personal data is defined as: “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”.

3. How we use your information

This privacy notice tells you how we will collect and use your personal data. We may use your personal data, for example:

• To contact you in response to a specific enquiry;
• To provide our products and services that you request from us;
• Send you transactional communications via the contact details you have provided to us during our services;
• Contact third parties on your behalf, with your specific instruction;
• Send you email notifications which you have specifically requested;
• To personalise the website for you;
• To send you promotional emails and mailings about our products, services, offers and other things that we think may be relevant to you,
• Operate and manage your account and manage any application, agreement or correspondence you may have with us;
• Carry out, monitor and analyse our business;
• To identify, prevent, detect or tackle fraud, money laundering, terrorism and other crimes;
• To contact you via email or telephone for market research reasons;
• To form a view of you as an individual and to identify, develop or improve products, that may be of interest to you;
• For audits, regulatory purposes, legal obligations, and compliance with industry standards;
• Perform other administrative and operational purposes including the testing of systems;
• Please note that we will not under any circumstances sell or share your data with third party marketing companies without your consent.

4. Why do we collect and store personal data?

We need to collect personal data in order for us to provide you with a service, to answer enquires about our services and to maintain our records. In any event, we are committed to ensuring that the information we collect, and use is appropriate for this purpose, and does not constitute an invasion of your privacy.

5. Personal data categories we collect

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have categorised as follows:

6. How we might collect personal data

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including as follows:

7. Processing purpose and our legal basis

Legal basis

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
• Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
• Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of the ways we plan to use the various categories of your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Direct marketing

During the process on our website when your personal data is collected, you will be asked to indicate your preferences for receiving direct marketing communications OR You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us and you have not opted out of receiving the marketing.

We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, and Usage Data to form a view about which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes.

Opting out of marketing

You can ask to stop sending you marketing communications at any time.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes.

Cookies

For more information about the cookies we use and how to change your cookie preferences, please see our Cookies Policy.

8. Recipients of your personal data

During the course of providing the services that you request from us, we may share your information with our processing partners, known as recipients and data processors.

We conduct due diligence with both recipients and data processors around the areas of their data security protocols, data protection policies and we have strict contracts in place that govern how they process your information.

Law firms who we recommend to you and instruct to pursue your potential claim relating to mis sold car finance: we have a panel of law firms, and will identify the relevant law firm to you before instructing the firm.

Credit file soft search

Where you give us your express permission (opt-in), a soft search of your credit file will be carried out to locate finance agreements relevant to your claim. This soft search is carried out by TAL Marketing Group Limited (trading as ViewThru), company number 10612899, FRN 968428, ICO registration ZB241343, of Work Life, Brown Street, Manchester, England, M2 1DH. A soft search does not affect your credit score.

Sharing your data with our partner firms and assignment of your claim

We may share your personal data with one or more of the parties listed below, including but not limited to assigning your claim to one of them to run through to redress on your behalf. If your claim is assigned to one of these parties, you will be notified of this and given the chance to opt out.

Transfer of Your Data to a New Provider

In the event that we cease to carry out regulated activities, or for other commercial reasons transfer, assign or novate all or part of our client portfolio (including your Agreement) to another regulated Third-Party firm, we may share your personal data, including:

• Your name;
• contact details;
• claim history; and
• any supporting documentation held in connection with your claim,

with that Third Party firm ("the New Provider"). This data sharing is carried out solely for the purpose of enabling the New Provider to continue handling your claim on the same or materially similar basis as we did, and not for marketing purposes. We will only share the data reasonably necessary for the New Provider to take over management of Your Claim.

Where such a transfer takes place, we will notify you in advance or within 7 days of the transfer (as set out in your Agreement), and that notice will confirm the identity of the New Provider, explain how your data will be used by them, and set out your right to opt out of the transfer. If you opt out, we will not transfer your personal data to the New Provider for this purpose.

The New Provider will act as a separate data controller in respect of your data once the transfer takes effect and will provide you with their own privacy notice explaining how it will handle your personal data going forward. This transfer is carried out on the lawful basis of performance of a contract in accordance with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

9. When we may have to disclose your personal data

We may have to disclose your personal data with other third parties as set out below. These organisations or bodies will not use your information to contact you. These third parties will be subject to obligations to process your personal information in compliance with the same safeguards that we deploy.

Compliance Consultants
Compliance Consultants and other like services acting as processors, based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain legal and compliance circumstances.

10. Making sure your data is secure

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

11. How long do we keep data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available and you can request more details of that by contacting our Data Protection Office.

By law we have to keep certain information about our customers and this data will be held solely and securely for those legal purposes.

12. Your rights as a data subject

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:

• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling.
• Right to judicial review: in the event that Accident Claims Specialists Ltd refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain and we have provided a specific section on this below.

All of the above requests will be forwarded on should there be a third party involved in the processing of your personal data.

13. Requesting access to my data

At your request, we can confirm what information we hold about you and how it is processed. If we do hold personal data about you, you can request the following information:

• Identity and the contact details of the person or organisation that has determined how and why to process your data.
• Contact details of the data protection officer, where applicable.
• The purpose of the processing as well as the legal basis for processing.
• If the processing is based on our legitimate interests or a third party, information about those interests.
• The categories of personal data collected, stored and processed.
• Recipient(s) or categories of recipients that the data is/will be disclosed to.
• If we intend to transfer the personal data to a third country or international organisation, information about how we ensure this is done securely. The EU has approved sending personal data to some countries because they meet a minimum standard of data protection. In other cases, we will ensure there are specific measures in place to secure your information.
• How long the data will be stored?
• Details of your rights to correct, erase, restrict or object to such processing.
• Information about your right to withdraw consent at any time.
• How to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority?
• Whether the provision of personal data is a statutory or contractual requirement, or a requirement necessary to enter into a contract, as well as whether you are obliged to provide the personal data and the possible consequences of failing to provide such data.
• The source of personal data if it wasn’t collected directly from you.
• Any details and information of automated decision making, such as profiling, and any meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and expected consequences of such processing.

What forms of ID will I need to provide in order to access this?

We may need to request specific information and documents from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data or to exercise any of your other rights. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We accept copies of the following forms of ID when information on your personal data is requested:

Passport, driving licence, birth certificate, utility bill from last 3 months.

Contact details of the Data Protection Officer are set out in section 15 (Contact Information).

14. When things don’t go as planned

In the event that you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by us or third parties, or how your complaint has been handled, you have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the supervisory authority and our Data Protection Officer.

15. Contact Information

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data protection practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) at:

16. Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 16 June 2025.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.

17. Consent for Pixel Tracking

By using our services, you consent to the use of pixel tracking technologies within our campaigns. These technologies enable us to monitor and analyse the performance of advertisements and user interactions to provide a better and more relevant advertising experience.

All data collected through pixel tracking is processed in compliance with applicable data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The data collected may include information such as website visits, ad clicks, and other interaction metrics, but it does not identify you personally.