Business Banking Privacy

We are TSB Bank, 20 Gresham Street, London, EC2V 7JA.  

TSB is committed to providing a real alternative in business banking in Britain. We want you to have trust and confidence in us and how we deal with your business information, and the personal information we collect during our relationship.

When providing business banking services, we manage personal information. This includes information relating to product parties and business parties. This personal information is protected by the UK’s privacy laws. These privacy laws do not apply to information about Partnerships in Scotland, Limited Liability Partnerships or Limited Companies, but do apply to information relating to product parties, business parties or any other individual who we manage. We will, of course, treat your business information as private and confidential and make sure it is kept secure.

We have a dedicated team that looks after data privacy rights. We also have a Data Protection Officer ("DPO") to guide our business and oversee our use of your personal information. Please see below for their contact information and for more information on how we manage your personal information.

When you apply for a product or service, and throughout our relationship, you will provide personal information to us, and we will gather certain personal information from other sources, some of which may be publicly available.

We can’t open or maintain an account or service if you don’t give us certain information. For example, we will not be able to open an account unless you provide details about product parties and business parties.

We use personal information so that we can deliver the banking service that business wants in the 21st century. This includes using personal information so that we can:

Provide you and/or business parties and/or product parties with services.

This is necessary to comply with our contractual obligations to you under our Terms and Conditions.

Identify products and services which might be suitable for you and/or business parties and/ or product parties.

We need to do this to meet our legitimate business interests in providing our customers with products and services that they like. You are under no obligation to make use of these products or services.

Assess lending and insurance risks.

This is necessary for us to meet our legitimate interests in making sure we have an appropriate risk profile. Ensuring that we do not take excessive risks is in the public benefit, as we make sure your money is kept safe.

Recover debts, prevent, detect and prosecute fraud and other crimes.

This is necessary to meet our legitimate interests in exercising our rights and making sure that you and other customers are not subject to crime or fraudulent activity.

Manage our and any member of our Group's relationship with you and/or business parties and/or product parties.

We may need to do this to make sure we can meet our contractual obligations under our Terms and Conditions. It also lets us access your account details when you contact us.

Update our records about you and/or business parties and/or product parties.

This is necessary to meet our legitimate interests in keeping our records accurate and up to date, and to make sure that we do not use out of date information about you.

Improve our performance.

This includes testing new systems and checking upgrades to existing systems, training, undertaking transactional analysis, conducting audits, assessing lending and insurance risks. It also covers customer modelling, statistical and trend analysis with the aim of developing and improving products and services, and providing information to Regulators. We do this to meet our legitimate interests in giving our customers better services, and making sure commercial and personal information is appropriately protected.

To undertake consumer experience research, we may pass your contact details to our trusted third-party market research companies, who may contact you on our behalf to conduct surveys and provide us with the results of your customer experience. We will use this information to develop products, services and process improvements. You will be given the opportunity to opt-out of these.

Improve security and combat fraud.

We use biometric data analysis to combat fraudsters. When you use a Business debit card to purchase goods or services online we will ask you to enter your email address, as well as a One Time Password sent to your phone at the point of payment. Although we won’t store or check your email address we will analyse the unique way you type your email address and the One Time Password as part of our identity verification. So should anyone else try to use your Business debit card to make an online purchase, we’ll be alerted to it because of the way they enter your details. The legal basis for this is the substantial public interest of combatting fraud.

Send direct marketing and promotional material.

We will offer you, product parties and business parties, an opportunity to receive direct marketing and promotional information which we think may be of interest, by post, email, phone or SMS. We will only send marketing if you let us know you want to receive it.

We respect your choices, and product parties and business parties can ask us to stop sending marketing to them at any time by contacting our Data Rights Team. Or simply click 'unsubscribe' in any marketing email we send, or by following the instructions in our marketing SMS – and when this happens, we will stop.

We may ‘profile’ TSB customers to allow us to identify relevant opportunities to promote TSB services to our customers. This may include reviewing historic and current data about which account or services you hold, the way you operate your accounts, your account balances and the transactions on your TSB accounts. This could include analysis of individual payments in and out of your accounts.

The profiling we carry out will aim to ensure the marketing of our products and services is likely to be of interest to you. We’ll do this through TSB channels, such as our branches, websites, mobile apps, telephone service; or through non-TSB channels, such as social media, websites, radio or TV advertising.

The lawful basis for the profiling we do, and any tailored marketing through these channels, is our legitimate interests. This means we have a legitimate interest in carrying out these activities in order to promote our business and to help ensure that our customers only receive useful information which is likely to be of interest to them. You can object to this by contacting our Data Rights Team. This means you’ll see more general marketing, and the pages and ads may be less relevant to you; the amount of advertisements will generally remain the same.

Social Media.

If product parties and/or business parties engage with TSB through social media, we may use their information to interact with them. We only use this information if you actively engage with or publish a post about TSB through social media, on the basis that it is in our legitimate interests to engage and interact with you when you discuss TSB and / or connect with us.

To deliver the best customer experience, we partner with software providers that allow us to connect with them via online communities and blogs. These partners manage personal information only in accordance with our instructions. Personal information will not be stored or transferred outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and TSB can instruct these partners to delete all personal information, or return it securely to TSB, at the end of our contract with them. Click here for a list of EEA countries.

Do what you ask us to do.

If you want particular services from us, or want to ask us a question, we will use product parties and/or business parties personal information to answer you. This is to meet our legitimate interests in making sure we can give you the best possible service.

Comply with legal obligations.

This might include providing information to HMRC, preventing money laundering and doing what our Regulators require. We only do this where strictly necessary to comply with these legal obligations.

To deliver better banking for Britain.

This includes using personal information to make sure we manage and develop customer relations; assess the suitability of existing and proposed products for our customers; pass information to Credit Reference Agencies (as described below); conduct internal or external reviews of our performance and quality.

We also instruct our internal or external legal teams; detect and prevent fraud and liaise with police and other anti-fraud agencies; engage with and interact on social media; and make sure we manage TSB as effectively and efficiently as possible.

We use personal information in this way as it is in our business interests to do so, and it allows us to defend our rights, provide a better service to our customers and understand what our customers want from us. Whenever we use personal information, we will always make sure we work to protect personal data interests and rights. We will not use personal information for any purpose which is contrary to those set out above. We will keep data appropriately secure, and tell customers when we use it for a new purpose.

We treat personal information as private and confidential, but may disclose it outside TSB in some circumstances, to fulfil the purposes set out above (including sharing with partners with whom we provide services as described above). This may include sharing it with subcontractors, who will act only on our instructions or our behalf, and will use your information only for the purposes set out above.

We will disclose information to others:

To meet our contractual obligations to you in accordance with the Terms and Conditions, including where:

• Other product parties and/or business parties may be entitled to see your transactions
• It is needed by other parties connected with your account (including guarantors)
• We need to share information with other lenders who also hold a charge on your property

Where we must comply with legal obligations to which we are subject, including where:

• HMRC or other authorities require it
• The law, a regulatory body or the public interest requires it
• It is required as part of our duty to protect your accounts - for example we are required to disclose your information to the UK Financial Services Compensation Service (FSCS) or it’s required by us or others to detect, investigate or prevent crime or fraud
• Or where the person consents or asks us to. If they give their consent, they can withdraw it at any time and we'll stop disclosing the information in that way

Credit Reference Agencies

In order to process your application for a product or service, we will perform credit and identity checks with one or more credit reference agencies (“CRAs”). Where you take banking services from us, we may also make periodic searches at CRAs to manage your account with us. 

To do this, we will supply business and personal information relating to you, product parties and/or business parties to CRAs and they will give us information about you and these people. This will include information from your credit application and about your financial situation, and financial history, as well as that of the product parties and business parties. CRAs will supply us with public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information as well as fraud prevention information. 

We will use this information to:

• Consider your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product
• Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us
• Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering
• Manage your account(s)
• Trace and recover debts
• Make sure any offers are appropriate to your circumstances   

We will continue to exchange information with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs. 

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file and that of the product parties and business parties.  These footprints may be seen by other lenders. 

If you tell us that you have a spouse or financial associate, we will link your records together. You should make sure you discuss this with them, and share this information, before making the application. CRAs will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or your spouse, or financial associate successfully files for a disassociation with the CRAs to break that link.

The identities of the CRAs, their role as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at www.experian.co.uk/crain. CRAIN is also accessible from each of the CRAs that TSB uses – clicking on any of these links will also take you to the same CRAIN document:

TransUnion www.transunion.co.uk/crain

Experian www.experian.co.uk/crain

Fraud Prevention Agencies

The government also requires us to screen applications that are made to us, to make sure we are complying with the international fight against terrorism, money laundering, modern slavery and other criminal activities. So we may need to disclose information to government bodies and to fraud prevention agencies to meet these legal obligations.

We will study patterns of activity, check for unusual transactions and monitor devices used to access TSB’s systems. Including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and may include using widely available geographical mobile phone technology to assess the location.

General 

Before we provide services, goods or financing to your business, we undertake checks for the purposes of preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify the identity of the business, product parties and business parties. These checks require us to process personal data about these people.

The personal data you have provided, we have collected from you, or we have received from third parties will be used to prevent fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity.

Details of the personal information that will be processed include, for example: name, address, date of birth, contact details, financial information, employment details, device identifiers including IP address and vehicle details of product parties and business parties.

We and fraud prevention agencies may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use this personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.

We process this personal data on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify identity, in order to protect our business and to comply with laws that apply to us. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of the services or financing you have requested.

Fraud prevention agencies can hold this personal data for different periods of time, and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years.

Consequences of processing 

If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the services or financing that has been requested, or we may stop providing existing services to you or your business.

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 the business. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the details above.

Data transfers  

Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to ‘international frameworks’ intended to enable secure data sharing.

If we or any other company in our Group wishes to sell or transfer all or part of its business and assets, or any associated rights or interests, or to acquire a business or enter into a merger, we/it may disclose your personal data and confidential business information to any potential buyer, transferee, merger partner or seller and its advisers and any other persons we/it may reasonably decide, provided that each person to whom information is disclosed promises to keep it confidential. If the sale or transfer is completed, the buyer, transferee or merger partner may continue to use and disclose the information, subject to the same provisions set out here

The UK and other EEA countries provide a high standard of data protection and privacy. We may run your accounts and provide other services from centres outside the UK and EEA, which are not considered by the European Commission to have a similar standard of legal protection for personal information. If so, we will require personal information to be protected to at least UK standards.

To do this, we make sure we only transfer personal information to countries which are regarded under EU law as providing an adequate level of protection for personal information, to companies in the USA which are certified as providing an adequate level of protection, or we will put in place contractual commitments which make sure they provide an adequate level of protection.

If you want to learn more about the specific countries to which we transfer personal data, or if you wish to obtain a copy of the safeguards we have in place for particular countries, please contact the Data Rights Team.

We may process payments through other financial institutions such as banks and the worldwide payments system operated by the SWIFT organisation if, for example, you make a CHAPS payment or a foreign payment. Those external organisations may process and store personal information abroad and may have to disclose it to foreign authorities to help them in their fight against crime and terrorism. If these are based outside the UK and the European Economic Area (“EEA”), such personal information may not be protected to standards similar to those in the UK, but we will take steps, including through contractual commitments, to make sure that an adequate level of protection is provided. Click here for a list of EEA countries.

We will only keep personal information for as long as your application for an account or product, or for as long as you have accounts or products with us. We will also keep your personal information for a certain period after your application has ended or you have closed your accounts.

When working out how long this period will last, we take into account our legal obligations, the expectations of financial and data protection regulators, and the amount of time we may strictly need to hold your personal information to carry on our business or defend our rights. For example, if you have an account with TSB, we will keep your information and details of the account, while the account is open. To meet our legal and regulatory requirements, we must keep a lot of this information for a number of years after the account is closed, even if you do not have another account with us. We will also keep your information in archived form in order to defend our legal rights (which may be for the period in which legal claims can be made under applicable law. In the UK, this is six years for contractual claims). We have policies and procedures in place to make sure we delete information that is no longer needed for any of these purposes.

People in the UK and across the EEA have certain rights over their personal information. These include the right to get a copy of their personal information or have some elements of it transmitted to themselves or another company in a common electric format. In certain circumstances, they can have their personal information corrected or erased, or have our use of their personal information restricted.  

They also have the right to object to our uses of their personal information as described above. 

Anyone who wishes to know more about their data rights should read our Data Privacy Notice, which can be found at: www.tsb.co.uk/privacy. They can also collect a copy at any TSB branch. We will generally not charge a person for exercising these rights. 

We aim to work with you in relation to any request, complaint or question you have about your personal information. However, if you believe we have not adequately resolved a matter, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Officer (the "ICO"). 

You have a right, at any time, to complain to the ICO, the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. You can follow this link to their website: https://ico.org.uk or ask for details from our Data Rights Team.