Privacy Policy – Somerset Equipment Finance

Somerset Equipment Finance Privacy Policy

This privacy policy applies to information held about our clients or any of their employees, officers, directors, agents, contractors or consultants (“Client Personnel”) or users of our website and other relevant individuals by Somerset Equipment Finance (UK) Limited (“we“, “us“, “our“), whose principal place of business in the United Kingdom is The Pinnacle, 170 Midsummer Boulevard, Milton Keynes, MK9 1FE. Our website is operated and provided by us. We are a data controller for the purpose of Data Protection Legislation (as defined below). See section 8 below for our contact details.

1.1) In this policy:

“Data Protection Legislation” means the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018; together with all other applicable legislation relating to privacy or data protection;

and where we use the terms “personal data“, “data subject“, “controller“, “processor” and “process” (and its derivatives), such terms shall have the meanings given to them in the Data Protection Legislation.

1.2) Using your Information

1.2.1) We may collect and process information relating to you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals, in order to provide our services to you. We shall process any information we collect in accordance with Data Protection Legislation and the provisions of this policy.

1.2.2) Before providing us with any information you are responsible for ensuring that your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals are aware of the policy and the provisions of such policy are clearly communicated to them.

1.3) Your Information

1.3.1) This ‘information’ includes personal data, which means information that can be used to identify a natural person, including (but not limited to) the following types of personal information:

(a) contact information, such as an individual’s home or work address and contact details (including mobile telephone number);

(b) date of birth;

(d) other information about an individual that you or they disclose to us when communicating with us;

(e) details of any complaints or concerns raised by you or them;

(f) information we obtain from providing our services or finance to you;

(g) information about your visit to our website, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs) and methods used to browse away from the page. Like most websites, we use “cookies” to help us make our site – and the way you use it – better. There are more details in our section on Cookies below;

(h) information you provide in a CV or other application form when applying for a job vacancy with us (whether you choose to submit a job application or CV to us online or in any other way) which may include but not be limited to your academic background, educational and professional qualifications, your right to work, visa status, employment history and status; and any other information about you that you disclose to us during the application process;

(i) information provided to us by recruitment agencies with whom you have registered an interest in working for us.

(j) information we obtain from third parties, such as information that we obtain when verifying details supplied by you. This information obtained from other third party organisations or people may include other members of the Somerset Equipment Finance (UK) Ltd and its affiliates (the “Group”), fraud prevention agencies, companies house or other similar organisations; and

(k) information we collect from you in compliance with our anti-money laundering and KYC policies.

1.3.2) If you fail to provide us with this information, or you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals object to us processing such information (see section 4 for more information about your rights in relation to your information) the consequences are that we may be prevented from conducting business with you, and we may be unable to provide our services or finance to you.

1.4) Our Use of Your Information

1.4.1) We may collect, record and use information about you, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals, and the business you conduct with us in physical and electronic form and will hold, use and otherwise process the data in accordance with the Data Protection Legislation and as set out in this policy. This may include sharing this information with third parties and transferring it abroad. More information about sharing and transferring such information is set out below.

1.4.2) We and other companies within the Group may process any information we hold about you, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals for a number of business purposes. You are responsible for ensuring that your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals are aware of such uses of their information. Examples of the types of uses of such information are set out below:

(a) to provide financing and leasing services to you;

(b) to enable us to carry out statistical and other analysis and to meet our legal or regulatory obligations;

(c) for our reasonable commercial purposes (including quality control and administration and assisting us to develop new and improved financial products and services);

(d) to confirm your or their identity and carry out background and credit checks, including as part of our checks in relation to anti-money laundering, compliance screening and to prevent fraud and other crimes;

(e) to follow up with you or them after you request information to see if we can provide any further assistance;

(f) to comply with any requirement of applicable regulations;

(g) to fulfil our obligations under any reporting agreement entered into with any tax authority or revenue service(s) from time to time;

(h) to check your instructions to us;

(i) to monitor, record and analyse any communications between you or them and us, including phone calls to analyse, assess and improve our services to you, as well as for training and quality purposes;

(j) to prevent or detect abuse of our services or any of our rights (and attempts to do so), and to enforce any agreement and to protect our (or others’) property or rights;

(k) to share information with relevant third parties in the context of a sale or potential sale of a relevant part of our business, subject always to confidentiality obligations;

(l) if instructed to do so by you or them or where you or they give us your consent to the use and/or processing involved;

(m) to notify you about changes to our service;

(n) to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;

(o) to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;

(p) as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;

(q) to consider your application where you have applied for a job vacancy with us, including to identify and contact you and in order to determine whether you have the professional skills, expertise and experience for the position applied for; and

(r) to bring to your or their attention (in person or by post, email or telephone) information about additional services offered by us and/or other members of the Group, which may be of interest to you or them, unless you or they indicate at any time that you or they do not wish us to do so.

1.5) Lawful Grounds For Using Your Information

1.5.1) We have described the purposes for which we may use information about you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals. We are permitted to process such information in this way, in compliance with the Data Protection Legislation, by relying on one or more of the following lawful grounds:

(a) you or they have explicitly agreed to us processing such information for a specific reason;

(b) the processing is necessary to perform the agreement we have with you or them or to take steps to enter into an agreement with you or them;

(d) the processing is necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest pursued by us, which might be:

(i) to prevent fraud;

(ii) to run and administer our business and protect our business interests;

(iii) to ensure that complaints are investigated;

(iv) to evaluate, develop or improve our financial products and services; or

(v) to keep our clients informed about relevant financial products and services, unless you have indicated at any time that you do not wish us to do so.

1.6) Automated processing

1.6.1) We do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling in relation to our clients.

1.6.2) In particular, in order to comply with our obligations under anti-money laundering legislation and policy and our KYC policy, we are required to verify the identity of all clients and other information (including but not limited to details of any nationality, citizenship or rights of residence you or your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals hold) to satisfy our regulatory obligations. We may do this using an electronic verification system that we consider suitable or by asking you for documentary evidence.

Information Sharing

2.1) Sharing Your Information With Others

2.1.1) We may share any information you provide to us with other members of the Group or to our or other members of the Group’s agents, counterparties and support service or data providers, wherever located, if this is necessary to provide you with our products and services, respond to your inquiries or for any other related purposes. If you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals have provided information to other members of the Group, those entities may also share that information with us. We will ensure that if we share such information with third parties, any such disclosure is at all times in compliance with Data Protection Legislation.

2.1.2) The recipients, or categories of recipients, of your information, or information relating to your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals, may be:

(a) any revenue service or tax authority including to HMRC, if obliged to do so under applicable regulations;

(b) your advisers (including, but not limited to, accountants, lawyers or other professional advisers) where authorised to do so by you;

(d) UK and overseas regulators and authorities in connection with their duties (such as crime prevention);

(e) fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity. We and fraud prevention agencies may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your information to detect, investigate and prevent crime;

(f) Group companies;

(g) analytics and search engine providers that may assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site;

(h) anyone to whom we may transfer our rights and/or obligations; and

(i) any other person or organisation after a restructure, sale or acquisition of any member of the Group, as long as that person uses your information for the same purposes as it was originally given to us or used by us (or both).

2.1.3) If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals pose a fraud or money laundering risk:

(a) we may refuse to provide the services or finance you have requested, or we may stop providing existing services to you; and

(b) a record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you or them.

2.2) Sharing Third Party Information With Us

If any information which you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals provide to us relates to any third party (such as a joint account holder or beneficiary), by providing us with such information you or they confirm that you or they have obtained any necessary permissions from such persons to the reasonable use of their information in accordance with this policy, or are otherwise permitted to give us this information on their behalf.

2.3) Links to Other Sites

Our site contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies of third party websites to which links are provided. You should check the privacy policies on these sites before providing any personal information.

2.4) How we protect your information

We take your online security seriously and have implemented generally accepted standards of technology and operational security to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. Once we have received your information we will ensure that the collection and use of your information is in accordance with Data Protection Legislation. All our personnel of are required to keep personal information confidential and only authorised persons have access to such information.

Please note, however, that the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to us or provided though our website.

Transferring Your Information Outside The UK

3.1) Information about you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals in our possession may be transferred to other countries (which may include countries outside the European Economic Area) for any of the purposes described in this policy, including our transmission of such information to other members of the Group and agents outside the European Economic Area.

3.2) You and they understand and accept that these countries may have differing (and potentially less stringent) laws relating to the degree of confidentiality afforded to the information it holds and that such information can become subject to the laws and disclosure requirements of such countries, including disclosure to governmental bodies, regulatory agencies and private persons, as a result of applicable governmental or regulatory inquiry, court order or other similar process. In addition, a number of countries have agreements with other countries providing for exchange of information for law enforcement, tax and other purposes.

3.3) When we, or our permitted third parties, transfer information outside the European Economic Area, we or they will impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect such information to the standard required in the European Economic Area. We or they may require the recipient to subscribe to international frameworks intended to enable secure data sharing. In the case of transfers by us, we may also transfer your information where:

3.3.1) the transfer is to a country deemed to provide adequate protection of your information by the European Commission; or

3.3.2) you, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals have consented to the transfer.

3.4) If we transfer your information outside the European Economic Area in other circumstances (for example because we have to provide such information by law), we will use best endeavours to put in place appropriate safeguards to ensure that your information remains adequately protected.

Your Rights In Relation To Your Information

4.1) General Rights

4.1.1) You, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals have a number of rights concerning the way that we use your information. You are responsible for ensuring that your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals are aware of these rights. At any time, such individuals shall have the right:

(a) to be informed about the processing of their personal data (i.e. for what purposes, what types, to what recipients it is disclosed, storage periods, any third party sources from which it was obtained, confirmation of whether we undertake automated decision-making, including profiling, and the logic, significance and envisaged consequences);

(b) to request access to, or a copy of, any personal data we hold about them;

(d) to request the erasure of their personal data, if they consider that we do not have the right to hold it;

(e) to object to their personal data being processed for a particular purpose or to request that we stop using their information;

(f) to request not to be subject to a decision based on automated processing and to have safeguards put in place if they are being profiled based on their personal data;

(g) to ask us to transfer a copy of their personal data to themselves or to another service provider or third party where technically feasible and otherwise required by applicable regulations;

(h) to withdraw, at any time, any consent that they have previously given to us for our use of their personal data; or

(i) to ask us to stop or start sending them marketing messages at any time.

4.2) Access to Your Information

4.2.1) You, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals may have a right of access to some, or all, of the information we hold about you or them, or to have any inaccurate information corrected, under the Data Protection Legislation. Any request for access to or a copy of your personal data must be in writing and we will endeavour to respond within a reasonable period and in any event within one month in compliance with Data Protection Legislation. We will comply with our legal obligations as regards any individual’s rights as a data subject.

4.2.2) We aim to ensure that the information we hold about you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals is accurate at all times. To assist us in ensuring that such information is up to date, please let us know if the personal details of you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals change by contacting us using the contact details in section 8. We will correct any incorrect or incomplete information and will stop processing personal data, or erase it, where there is no legal reason for us to continue to hold or use that information.

Retaining Your Information

5.1) We will only keep the information we collect about you, your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals on our systems or with third parties for as long as required for the purposes set out above or as required to comply with any legal obligations to which we are subject. This will involve us regularly reviewing our files to check that information is accurate and up-to-date and still required.

5.2) We will normally destroy or erase data after the termination of our relationship or as required by any applicable regulations. However, we may retain your information, or information relating to your Client Personnel and other relevant individuals after you cease to be a client for longer than this, provided it is necessary for a legal, regulatory, fraud prevention or other legitimate business purpose.

Sending You Marketing Information

6.1) We and other members of the Group may use your information from time to time to inform you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals by letter, telephone, text (or similar) messages, email or other electronic means, about similar products and services (including those of third parties) which may be of interest to you or them. You are responsible for ensuring that those individuals are aware that we may use their information for marketing purposes to inform them about services which may be of interest to them.

6.2) You, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals may, at any time, request that we cease or do not send such information by one, some or all channels, by contacting us using the contact details in section 8.

Cookies

7.1) Our use of Cookies

We set and access cookies and similar technology on the device you use to access this website in order to obtain information about how you access and use the website. This in turn helps us to provide you with a good experience and allows us to improve the website. You can adjust the settings on your computer or other device to decline any cookies if you wish. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, the site will set cookies when you load and navigate them. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer and stored on the computer’s hard drive. Such information will not identify you personally. It is statistical data. This statistical data does not identify any personal details whatsoever.

7.2) What are Cookies?

7.2.1) Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a Site. Cookies are then sent back to the originating Site during your browsing session or on each subsequent visit, or to another Site that recognises that cookie. The cookies we set do lots of different jobs, like help us to improve the Site and deliver a better and more personalised service, remember your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. You can find more information about cookies at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

7.2.2) We cannot read any information on your computer’s hard drive through our use of cookies.

7.2.3) Please be aware that parts of the website may not function correctly if you disable cookies and you may not be able use the website features to its fullest.

7.3) Cookies can be categorised in accordance with the categories found in the ICC UK cookie guide as set out below:

7.3.1) Strictly necessary cookies – these cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around a site and use its features and enable services you have specifically asked for. Consent is not generally required for these cookies.

7.3.2) Performance cookies – these cookies collect information about how visitors use a site (for example, by recording which pages or features visitors use most often (usually on an anonymous basis)).

7.3.3) Functionality cookies – these cookies allow a site to remember the choices a user makes, such as a user name or language preference.

7.3.4) Targeting or advertising cookies – these cookies collect information about a user’s browsing habits and are usually placed by advertising networks with the site operator’s permission.

Cookies can also be categorised in accordance with how long they are saved on your device: “session cookies” are short-term cookies that are only saved on the device’s memory for the duration of a user’s visit to the site, whereas “persistent cookies” remain saved in the device’s memory for a set period of time, even after the browser session has ended.

7.4) Refusing or restricting cookies

7.4.1) You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. The “Help” or “Internet Settings” functions within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ which contains detailed information on cookies and how to delete, restrict or block them on a wide variety of browsers. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.

7.4.2) Please be aware that if you select to refuse or restrict cookies you may be unable to access certain parts of the Site.

Contacting Us

8.1) If you or any of your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals wish to exercise any of the rights relating to your information set out above, or if you have any questions or comments about data protection, or you wish to raise a complaint about how we are using your information you can contact us using the following details, or any other details notified to you from time to time:

8.1.1) Write to the registered and head office of Somerset Equipment Finance (UK) Limited at:

The Pinnacle,

170 Midsummer Boulevard,

Milton Keynes,

MK9 1FE

Or notices@somersetcapital.com

Call +1 877.282.9922 (Please note calls may be recorded or monitored for training purposes.)

8.1.2) Write to the Data Protection Lead at:

Mark Fiorentino

c/o Somerset Capital Group Ltd

612 Wheelers Farms, Milford

CT 06461 United States

8.1.3) Details of all our offices are available on our website http://somersetcapital.com/uk/.

8.2) If you, your Client Personnel or other relevant individuals have any concerns about our use of your or their information, you and they also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates and supervises the use of personal data in the UK, via their helpline on 0303 123 1113.

8.3) We may make changes to this policy and how we use your information in the future. If we do this, we’ll post an updated version of this policy on our website.