Privacy Policy

Consumer Privacy notice

Last updated: 10 September 2026

Protecting your personal information is extremely important to us at Westmarq.

The way we collect, use, store and share your information is equally important. Our customers expect us to manage their information privately and securely.

This privacy notice tells you how we collect and process your personal information. This privacy notice may be subject to future change.

What does this privacy notice cover?

This privacy notice relates to any individual consumers of our goods and/or services, including users of our application-based technology and those individuals who, obtain quotes, utilise our services, purchase our products, enter into agreements with us, individuals that we cover under employer sponsored schemes and/or individuals that we may otherwise interact with us in the course of our business.

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 (including prospective customers), their appointed representatives (e.g. individuals with powers of attorney), employees, shareholders, business contacts and suppliers. Any reference to “information” or “data” in this privacy notice 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:

Type of data	Description	Examples of how we use it
Contact	Who you are. Where you live How to contact you Third party contacts (e.g. family members or friends)	Servicing your products Marketing & Analysis Enhancing our product and service offering Product underwriting and pricing
Personal details	Age Gender Visual images and personal appearance Financial Details	Marketing & Analysis Product underwriting and pricing Preventing and investigating misrepresentation and potential fraud
Vulnerability details	Capability/ capacity Financial circumstances Life events Health details	Ensuring accessibility Servicing your products Making sure our products and services meet our customers’ needs
Transactional	How you use your products Changes you make to your products or account	Servicing your products Making sure our products and services are fit for purpose
Contractual	Your purchase history	Making sure the product is right for you. Product underwriting and pricing
Consent and preferences	Ways, you want us to market to you. Information obtained from third parties acting on your behalf	Marketing Prevention of direct marketing to those who have opted out
Technical	Details on the devices and technology you use	Making sure our products and services are fit for purpose
Open data and public records	Electoral register Land registry Other information about you that is openly available on the internet (including social media platforms)	Product and service administration including processing claims
Location data	Your device’s current location Use of location services such as the location services of your operating system or browser, sensor data from your device (e.g. Bluetooth data, beacon data, Wi-Fi access points, GPS data and cell tower data).	In limited circumstances some products and/or services will require location data for the purpose of access control functionality, however you can change location setting on your device at any time. We will never share your location with others, except with your express consent or as permitted under this Privacy Notice.
	If you have turned on persistent background location services on your device, we may obtain your device’s location even while you are not using the services or products on your device. The persistent background location services use various technologies to determine your precise location, such as the location services of your operating system or browser, sensor data from your device (e.g. magnetometer, barometer, gyroscopes, accelerometers, compasses, Bluetooth data, beacon data, Wi-Fi access points, GPS data, and cell tower data). If you have opted-in to sharing your background location with us as part of using our services or products, you can opt- out at any time by going into your device settings and switching off background sharing / location services

Where do we get our information from?

Directly from you- information you provide when you fill in forms or contact us by phone, email etc…
- This could include information you provide to us electronically (through our website or an online portal, for example). We may record phone calls for our mutual protection and to improve our customer service standards.
Information we collect about you or receive from other sources.
- information we get from your online browsing activity,
- information from a third party
- information from publicly available sources such as social media platforms or the electoral register.
- We may also receive information if you have been dealing with a financial adviser or broker or have been introduced to us by another company (e.g. a bank or building society).
We use cookies and similar technologies to support the functioning of our websites and applications. This includes allowing you to browse between pages effectively, recording and storing your preferences and generally improving your online experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you. You can find more information about setting your cookie preferences by using the ‘Cookie Policy’ link at the bottom of our websites.

How do we use your information?

We use personal information that we hold about you:

To carry out our responsibilities resulting from any agreements you’ve entered into with us (e.g. to administer your products, including processing claims, resolving and responding to complaints) and to provide you with the information, products and services that you’ve asked from us.
To provide you with marketing information about services and products we offer across Westmarq which may be of interest to you. If you have opted in to receive marketing from us, based on your marketing preferences we may deliver this information by post, telephone, e-mail, SMS or personalised online marketing via social media platforms. Please note that if you choose not to receive online marketing, you will not see personalised marketing messages using your personal data, however you may still see generic online advertising about our products and services. We will not sell your data to third parties for them to market to you. We may also send marketing to you using our “legitimate interests”, please see below for further information.
To tell you about changes to our services and products.
To comply with any applicable legal or regulatory requirements.
For carrying out market research, statistical analysis and customer profiling to help us to improve our processes, products and services and generate new business (e.g. to understand digital behaviours, identify financial attitudes, find new audiences with similar attributes and develop more engaging communications). This may also include sharing your personal information with our third-party platform and media suppliers to prevent you seeing adverts for products you have already purchased from us.
To define our pricing strategies.
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, quality assurance and audit.

When you purchase a product or receive a service from us, the form you fill out, or the resulting contract may contain additional conditions relating to the way we use and process your personal information. These will apply in addition to the uses described in this document.

In some cases, we may use software or systems to make automated decisions (including profiling) based on the personal information we hold or collect from others. These may include:

The prevention and detection of fraud and financial crime
To perform transaction monitoring, identity verification, money laundering and sanctions checks, and to identify politically exposed individuals. We are required by law to perform these activities which may be achieved using solely automated means to make decisions about you or any individual related to your products or application. We may use these activities to decline the services you have requested or to stop providing existing services to you.
AI and Speech Analytics
We may use speech analytics on recorded phone calls to help us meet our regulatory obligations e.g. identify vulnerable customers, complaints, staff training needs, process and product development, quality control and audit. These activities are not solely based on automated processing. The results are manually reviewed to decide if we need to take further action.
Servicing activities such as
(I) Personalising the content and design of communications and
(ii) Determining when to provide tailored communications about your Westmarq products and the appropriate channels to use
These may be achieved using marketing analytics in order to predict certain characteristics about you (e.g. your economic situation, interests, personal preferences or transactional behaviour). The activities will not have a detrimental effect on you.

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 notice. 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 services needed to honour our contracts with you: We’ll process your personal information to carry out our responsibilities resulting from any agreements you’ve entered into with us and to provide you with the information, products and services you’ve asked for from us.
Complying with applicable laws: We may process your personal information to comply with any legal obligation we’re subject to.
Consent: Where you have consented, we will contact third parties to obtain or share information on your behalf.
We may also provide you with the opportunity to consent to certain optional processes, such as responding to surveys or participating in focus groups.
We may provide you with marketing information about our services or products where you’ve provided your consent for us to do so.
You may opt out of marketing at any time by e-mailing or telephoning your customer services team, details of which can also be found using the relevant Contact Us section of our website.
Legitimate interests: To use your personal data for any other purpose described in this privacy notice, 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, which can include creating customer demographics and/or profiling.
- Develop and test the effectiveness of marketing activities.
- Send marketing information, via post only, to customers who have a relevant and appropriate relationship with Westmarq and other individuals we believe may be interested in our products. This will not apply if they have opted out (which can be done at any time).
- Develop, test and manage our brands, products and services.
- Analyse and manage how our customers use products and services from us and our business partners, including through customer surveys.

To use legitimate interest, we must carry out an assessment of our interests in using your personal data against the interests you have as a citizen and the rights you have under data protection laws.

The outcome of this assessment will determine whether we can rely on legitimate interest in order to process your personal data. We’ll always act reasonably and give full and proper consideration to your interests in carrying out this assessment.

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.

For certain research and statistical activities, we may indefinitely retain minimised personal information about you, solely to define our pricing and risk strategies. These activities will not be used to make a decision, or take measures, against you.

Occasionally, it may be impossible to delete data, due to technical limitations. In these cases, we will take steps to put the data beyond use. This means that your data will not be accessed or shared and your rights and freedoms will not be affected.

Who do we share your personal information with?

We’ll only disclose your information to:

Third-party suppliers, contractors and service providers for the purposes listed under “How do we use your information” above.
Selected third parties, so that they can contact you with details of the services that they provide, where you have expressly opted-in or consented to the disclosure of your personal data for these purposes.
Our regulators, government agencies (e.g. HMRC), law enforcement agencies, credit reference agencies, data verification, fraud prevention agencies, as well as our professional advisers etc.

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

In the event that 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 you have been dealing with a bank, building society, financial adviser or broker, we’ll provide information about your products and, where appropriate, other information about your dealings with us, to enable the adviser to give you informed advice.
In order to enforce or apply the terms of any contract with you.
To protect you and Westmarq from financial crime, Westmarq may be required to verify the identity of new and sometimes existing customers. This may be achieved by using credit reference agencies to search sources of information relating to you (an identity search). If this fails, Westmarq may need to approach you to obtain documentary evidence of identity. The checks will not affect your credit rating, but your credit record may show that a search has been made (sometimes referred to as a soft footprint).
Westmarq may use a third party surveyor to carry out the survey or valuation of the property.
If you’ve been introduced to us by another company (e.g. bank, building society, or a financial adviser), we may share your information with them to enable them to:
- Administer and service your products.
- Carry out market research, statistical analysis and customer profiling.
- Where you have consented, send you marketing information by post, telephone, e-mail and SMS about their products and those of carefully selected third parties.

Fraud prevention

The personal information Westmarq collects from you may be shared with fraud prevention agencies who will use it to prevent fraud and money laundering and to verify your identity.

If we identify that false or inaccurate information has been provided and fraud is identified, we will pass 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 the police and we may check and/or file your details with fraud prevention agencies and databases.

If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. Further details of how your information will be used by us, and these fraud prevention agencies can be found by accessing these links:

CIFAS - cifas.org.uk/fun
National Hunter - nhunter.co.uk/privacypolicy

Protecting your data outside the UK

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the UK to third-party suppliers, delegates or agents. We’ll take all reasonably necessary steps to make sure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice, to ensure your personal information is handled with the same protections that we apply ourselves.

We’ll only transfer your data to a recipient outside the UK 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 UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, (b) where the transfer is to a territory that is deemed ‘adequate’ by the UK, or (c) where the recipient is subject to an approved certification mechanism and the personal information is subject to appropriate safeguards, etc).

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 your rights, please contact us using the details below:

Email: [email protected]

Alternatively, you can use the Contact Us section on our website.

Your rights
1.	The right to be informed about how we process your personal information. This right is met by the provision of this document.
2.	The right to access the personal data that we hold about you.
3.	The right to make us correct any inaccurate personal data we hold about you.
4.	The right to ask us to 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
5.	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 need to hold it in order to stop its processing. You have the right to require us to erase the personal data, but you 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.
6.	The right to object to our processing of personal data we hold about you (including for the purposes of sending marketing materials to you or using your personal information for profiling purposes).
7.	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.
8.	The right to withdraw your consent. This only applies where we’re relying on your consent in order to use your personal data (for example, to provide you with marketing information about our services or products).
9.	Automated decision-making and profiling We do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling that would have a legal or significant effect on you.

Complaints

If you have any concerns about how we process your personal data, you have the right to make a complaint to us.

You can submit a data protection complaint using the contact details below:

Email:

[email protected]

Post:

Complaints Manager

Westmarq

Ground Floor

Wellington House

Market St

Barnsley

S70 1WA

We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 calendar days and take appropriate steps to investigate and respond without undue delay.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your complaint, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Further information on how to raise a complaint can be found on the ICO’s website:

https://ico.org.uk/

You can also contact the ICO at:

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