Professional Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2020

Protecting your personal information is extremely important to The Idol. It’s especially important for a business like ours, as our customers and professional business clients trust us to look after a huge amount of sensitive information on everything from their business affairs to their medical history.

The way we collect and share your information is equally important. Our professional business clients expect us to manage their information privately and securely. If we don’t, they’ll lose trust in us.

This policy tells you how we collect and process your personal business information. Please take a few minutes to read it and show it to anyone else connected to the business relationship.

Who are we?

Investment Discounts On Line Limited is part of the Legal & General Group and is the registered data controller of your personal data for the purposes of the Data Protection Act. Trading names of Investment Discounts On Line Limited also known as theidol.com include comparecover.com, protectmypeople.com and annuityready.com.

What does this policy cover?

This privacy policy relates to individuals working for/ as businesses who enter into agreements with us (e.g. employers, affiliates, intermediaries, insurance companies). We have a separate privacy policy for retail customers, which can be found on our website.

What is personal information?

When we talk about personal information, we mean information about an individual that can identify them, like their name, address, e-mail address, telephone number and financial details. It can relate to customers, employees, shareholders, business contact and suppliers. Any reference to “information” or “data” in this policy is a reference to personal information about a living individual.

What information do we hold?

We may collect and process the following personal information about you. In most cases this will be limited to business information that relates to you, how these have an impact on our products and services that may be of interest to you and how we manage our relationship.

Type of data	Description	Examples of how we use it
Contact	Who you are How to contact you	Managing and servicing our business relationship Business to business marketing Analysis Enhancing our product and service offering
Personal Details	Visual images & personal appearance Financial details	Managing and servicing our business relationship Business to business marketing Analysis
Transactional	How you may use our products and services	Managing and servicing our business relationship Making sure our products and services are fit for purpose Analysis Enhancing our product and service offering
Contractual	Your creditworthiness (if applicable)	Managing and servicing our business relationship
Preferences	Ways you want us to market to you	Business to business marketing Enhancing our product and service offering
Technical	Details on the technology you use	Analysis Making sure our products and services are fit for purpose
Open data & public records	Other information about you that is openly available on the internet	Managing and servicing our business relationship Business to business marketing
Documentary data & national identifiers	Company details	Managing and servicing our business relationship Compliance with statutory regulations and to prevent financial crime

Where do we get our information from?

Information you give us directly (when you fill in forms, contact us by phone or e-mail or request information regarding our products and services etc). We may record phone calls for our mutual protection, to meet our regulatory and contractual obligations and to improve our customer service standards.
Information we collect about you or receive from other sources.

This could be information you provide to us electronically (through our website or an online portal, for example), information we get from a third party or from publicly available sources such as regulatory bodies (e.g. FCA, Companies House etc). For more information on how we use cookies, please check our cookie policy which can be found on our website.

How do we use your information?

We use personal information that we hold about you:

To carry out our responsibilities resulting from any business or commercial agreements you’ve entered with us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you’ve asked from us.
To provide you with business to business marketing information about services and products we offer across Investment Discounts On Line Limited which may be of interest to you.
To tell you about changes to our services and products.
To comply with any applicable legal or regulatory requirements (including to comply with any applicable regulatory reporting or disclosure requirements).
For carrying out statistical analysis to help us improve our processes, products and services and generate new business (e.g. to develop more engaging communications).
To run our business in an efficient and proper way. This includes testing our systems, managing our financial position, business capability, planning, communications, corporate governance and audit.
For any other purpose that we’ve agreed with you from time to time.

Using your information in accordance with data protection laws

Data protection laws require us to meet certain conditions before we’re allowed to use your personal information in the way we describe in this privacy policy. We take these responsibilities extremely seriously. To use your personal information, we’ll rely on the following conditions, depending on the activities we’re carrying out:

Providing our contracts & services to you: We’ll process your personal information to carry out our responsibilities resulting from any commercial agreements or contracts you’ve entered into with us and to provide you with the information, products and services you’ve asked from us, which may include online services.
Complying with applicable laws: We may process your personal information to comply with any legal obligation we’re subject to.
Legitimate interests: To use your personal data for any purpose described in this privacy policy, we’ll rely on a condition known as “legitimate interests”. It’s in our legitimate interests to collect your personal data as it provides us with the information that we need to provide our services to you more effectively. We may use your information to:

Carry out market research and product development.
We may provide you with business to business marketing information about our services or products. You may object to this type of marketing at any time by emailing customerservices@theidol.com or by telephoning our customer service team on 0800 915 7885.
Develop, test and manage our brands, products and services.
Study and manage how our professional business clients use products and services from us and our business partners.
Manage risk for us and our retail customers.

Consent: We may process your personal information for different purposes where you’ve provided your consent to do so.
Criminal Conviction Data: We may process this type of information solely for the purpose of preventing fraud.

Please be aware that the personal information you provide to us and which we collect about you, is required for us to be able to provide our services to you and without it we may not be able to do so.

How long do we keep your information for?

We’ll keep your personal information in accordance with our internal retention policies. We’ll determine the length of time we keep it for based on the minimum retention periods required by law or regulation. We’ll only keep your personal information after this period if there’s a legitimate and provable business reason to do so.

Who do we share your personal information with?

We’ll only disclose your information to:

Other companies within The Idol, third-party suppliers, contractors and service providers for the purposes listed under “ How do we use your information?” above.
Our regulators, government (e.g. HMRC) and law enforcement or fraud prevention agencies.

Additionally, we may disclose your personal information to third parties:

If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we’ll disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If we, or substantially all our assets, are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our professional business clients will be one of the transferred assets.
In order to enforce or apply the terms of any contract we have with you.
If we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or regulatory requirements, or otherwise for the prevention or detection of fraud or crime.
To protect you and Investment Discounts On Line Limited from financial crime, we may be required to verify the identity of new and sometimes existing professional business clients. This may be achieved by using reference agencies to search sources of information relating to you (an identity search). This will not affect your credit rating. If this fails, the business may need to approach you to obtain documentary evidence of identity.
In accordance with business agreements, we may perform credit checks on certain types of professional business clients.

Fraud prevention

The business may need to check your details with fraud prevention agencies. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified details will be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We may also share information about you with other organisations and public bodies, including police and we may check and/ or file your details with fraud prevention agencies and databases.

The Idol and other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:

Managing credit and credit related accounts or facilities.
Recovering debt.
Checking details on proposals.
Checking details of professional business clients.

Investment Discounts On Line Limited and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies. Please contact our Customer Service department if you wish to receive the relevant details of the fraud prevention agencies:

Address: theidol.com, Eden Business Park, Penrith, Cumbria, CA11 9FB.

Transferring your data outside the EU

The data we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored by, third-party suppliers, delegates or agents at a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). We’ll take all reasonably necessary steps to make sure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

We’ll only transfer your data to a recipient outside the EEA where we’re permitted to do so by law (for instance, (A) where the transfer is based on standard data protection clauses adopted or approved by the European Commission, (B) where the transfer is to a territory that is deemed adequate by the European Commission, or (C) where the recipient is subject to an approved certification mechanism and the personal information is subject to appropriate safeguards, etc).

Unfortunately, sending information via e-mail is not completely secure; anything you send is done so at your own risk. Once received, we will secure your information in accordance with our security procedures and controls.

Your rights

You have rights under data protection law that relate to the way we process your personal data. More information on these rights can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please get in touch with our customer service team by emailing customerservices@theidol.com or by telephoning our customer service team on 0800 915 7885.

Your Rights

1. The right to access the personal data that we hold about you.

2. The right to make us correct any inaccurate personal data we hold about you.

3. The right to make us erase any personal data we hold about you. This right will only apply where for example:

We no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for
You withdraw your consent if we're using your personal data based on that consent
Where you object to the way we use your data, and there is no overriding legitimate interest

4. The right to restrict our processing of the personal data we hold about you. This right will only apply where for example:

You dispute the accuracy of the personal data we hold.
You would like your data erased, but we require to hold it in order to stop its processing.
You have the right to require us to erase the personal data but would prefer that our processing is restricted instead.
Where we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for, but you need the data for legal claims.

5. The right to object to our processing of personal data we hold about you (including for the purposes of sending marketing materials to you).

6. The right to receive personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to make us transfer this personal data to another organisation.

7. The right to withdraw your consent, where we're relying on it to use your personal data (for example, to provide you with marketing about our services or products).

Contacts and complaints

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or wish to exercise any of your rights, including changing your marketing preferences, please get in touch with our Customer Services team.

If you have any concerns about the way we process your personal data or are not happy with the way we've handled a request by you in relation to your rights, you also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office. Their address is:

First Contact Team
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF

Data Protection Officer

If you'd like to exercise your right to access any personal information that we hold about you, write to: theidol.com, The Edge, Eden Business Park, Penrith, Cumbria CA11 9FB

You can also contact our Data Protection Manager directly with any questions or issues relating to the way we process your personal information:

Name: Mary Davis
Email address: datacontroller@theidol.com
Address: The Edge, Eden Business Park, Penrith, Cumbria, CA11 9FB

If you are not satisfied with the way we deal with your enquiry you can escalate your request to:

Group Protection Officer
Email address: data.protection@landg.com
Address: 1 Coleman Street, London, EC2R 5AA