Lending Privacy Notice

Fulfilling contract This basis is appropriate where the processing is necessary for us to manage your accounts and credit union services to you

Administrative Purposes: We will use the information provided by you, either contained in this form or any other form or application, for the purpose of assessing this application, processing applications you make and to maintain and administer any accounts you have with the credit union.

Security: In order to secure repayment of the loan, it may be necessary to obtain security such as a charge on your property or other personal assets. 

Third parties: We may appoint external third parties to undertake operational functions on our behalf. We will ensure that any information passed to third parties conducting operational functions on our behalf will be done with respect for the security of your data and will be protected in line with data protection law.

Guarantors: As part of your loan conditions, we may make the requirement for the appointment of a guarantor a condition of your loan agreement in order that credit union ensures the repayment of your loan. Should your account go into arrears, we may need to call upon the guarantor to repay the debt in which case we will give them details of the outstanding indebtedness. If your circumstances change it may be necessary to contact the guarantor.

Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) Affiliation: The ILCU (a trade and representative body for credit unions in Ireland and Northern Ireland) provides professional and business support services such as marketing and public affairs representation, monitoring, financial, compliance, risk, learning and development, and insurance services to affiliated credit unions. As this credit union is affiliated to the ILCU, the credit union must also operate in line with the ILCU Standard Rules (which members of the credit union are bound to the credit union by) and the League Rules (which the credit union is bound to the ILCU by). We may disclose information in your application or in respect of any account or transaction of yours from the date of your original membership to authorised officers or employees of the ILCU for the purpose of the ILCU providing these services to us.

The ILCU Savings Protection Scheme (SPS): We may disclose information in any application from you or in respect of any account or transaction of yours from the date of your original membership to authorised officers or employees of the ILCU for the purpose of the ILCU providing these services and fulfilling requirements under our affiliation to the ILCU, and the SPS.

The Privacy Notice of ILCU can be found at www.creditunion.ie

For the processing of electronic payments services on your account (such as credit transfers, standing orders and direct debits), the Credit Union is a participant of CUSOP (Payments) DAC (“CUSOP”). CUSOP is a credit union owned, independent, not-for-profit company that provides an electronic payments service platform for the credit union movement in Ireland. CUSOP is an outsourced model engaging third party companies, such as a Partner Bank, to assist with the processing of payment data.

Insurance: As part of our affiliation with the ILCU, we purchase insurance from ECCU Assurance DAC (ECCU), a life insurance company, wholly owned by the ILCU. This includes Life Savings (LS), Loan Protection (LP), and optional related riders (where applicable).

If you choose to take out a loan with us, it is a term of your membership, by virtue of our affiliation with the ILCU that the credit union will apply to ECCU for Loan Protection (LP). In order that we apply for LP it may be necessary to process ‘special category’ data, which includes information about your health. This information will be shared with ECCU to allow it deal with insurance underwriting, administration and claims on our behalf.

Credit Assessment: When assessing your application for a loan, the credit union will take a number of factors into account and will utilise personal data provided from:

·         your application form or as part of your loan supporting documentation;

·         your existing credit union file;

·         credit referencing agencies such as the Central Credit Registrar.

The credit union then utilises this information to assess your loan application in line with the applicable legislation and the credit union’s lending policy.

Member Service: To help us improve our service to you, we may use information about your account to help us improve our services to you.

Home Loans: A legal charge on the property will be processed for all home loans.  Data will be shared with your legal advisors in this regard.

Legal Duty This basis is appropriate when we are processing personal data to comply with an Irish or EU Law.

Regulatory and statutory requirements: To meet our duties to the Regulator, the Central Bank of Ireland, we may allow authorised people to see our records (which may include information about you) for reporting, compliance and auditing purposes. For the same reason, we will also hold the information about you when you are no longer a member. We may also share personal data with certain statutory bodies such as the Department of Finance, the Department of Social Protection and the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman Bureau of Ireland, the appropriate Supervisory Authority if required under law.

Purpose of the loan: We are obliged to ensure that the purpose for the loan falls into one of our categories of lending.

Compliance with our anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing obligations: The information provided by you will be used for compliance with our customer due diligence and  screening obligations under anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing obligations under The Money Laundering provisions of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, as amended by Part 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 2013 (“the Act”),

Audit: To meet our legislative and regulatory duties to maintain audited financial accounts, we appoint an external and internal auditor. We will allow the internal and external auditor to see our records (which may include information about you) for these purposes.

Credit Reporting: Where a loan is applied for in the sum of €2,000 or more, the credit union is obliged to make an enquiry of the Central Credit Register (CCR) in respect of the borrower. Where a loan is granted in the sum of €500 or more, the credit union is obliged to report both personal details and credit details of the borrower [and guarantor shortly] to the CCR.

House Loan: Where you obtain a house loan from us, it will be necessary for the credit union to obtain a first legal charge on the property to be purchased and it will be necessary for us to process your personal data in order to register this charge or have this charge registered on our behalf.

Connected/Related Party Borrowers: We are obliged further to Central Bank Regulations to identify where borrowers are connected in order to establish whether borrowers pose a single risk.  We are also obliged to establish whether a borrower is a related party when lending to them, i.e. whether they are on the Board/Management Team or a member of the Board/ Management team’s family or a business in which a member of the Board /Management Team has a significant shareholding.

Legitimate interests A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you. If we rely on our legitimate interest, we will tell you what that is.

Credit Assessment and Credit Reference Agencies:

When assessing your application for a loan, as well as the information referred to above in credit assessment, the credit union also utilises credit data from credit referencing agencies such as the Central Credit Registrar (See legal duty).  Our legitimate interest: The credit union, for its own benefit and therefore the benefit of its members, must lend responsibly and will use your credit scoring information in order to determine your suitability for the loan applied for. When using the service of a credit referencing agency, we will pass them your personal details and details of your credit performance.

Debt Collection: Where you breach the loan agreement we may use the service of a debt collection agency, solicitors or other third parties to recover the debt. We will pass them details of the loan application in order that they make contact with you and details of the indebtedness in order that they recover the outstanding sums. We may use a private investigator in order to locate you in the event that you fail to make repayments on your loan and or fail to make contact with the credit union.

Our legitimate interest: The credit union, where appropriate will take necessary steps to recover a debt to protect the assets and equity of the credit union.

Judgements Searches: We may carry out searches in Stubbs Gazette in order to assess your credit worthiness to repay a loan.

Our legitimate interest: The credit union, for its own benefit and therefore the benefit of its members, must lend responsibly and will use your credit scoring information in order to determine your suitability for the loan applied for. In carrying out such a search we can better determine your overall financial position in order to lend to you.

CCTV: We have CCTV footage installed on the premises with clearly marked signage. The purpose of this is for security, public safety and the prevention and detection of fraud.

Our legitimate interest: With regard to the nature of our business, it is necessary to secure the premises, property herein and any staff/volunteers/members or visitors to the credit union and to prevent and detect fraud.

Your consent

Marketing and Market Research

To help us improve and measure the quality of our products and services we undertake market research from time to time. This may include using the Irish League of Credit Unions and/ specialist market research companies. See section on Your Marketing Preferences.

Your Rights in connection with your personal data are to:

	To find out whether we hold any of your personal data, and if we do, to request access to that data and to be furnished with a copy of that data.  You are also entitled to request further information about the processing.
	Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you rectified.
	Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
	Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
	Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. You can ask us to suspend processing personal data about you, in certain circumstances.
	Where we are processing your data based solely on your consent, you have a right to withdraw that consent at any time and free of charge.
	Request that we: a) provide you with a copy of any relevant personal data in a reusable format; or b) request that we transfer your relevant personal data to another controller where it’s technically feasible to do so. ‘Relevant personal data is personal data that:  You have provided to us or which is generated by your use of our service. Which is processed by automated means and where the basis that we process it is on your consent or on a contract that you have entered into with us.

You have a right to complain to the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) in respect of any processing of your data by:

Please note that the above rights are not always absolute and there may be some limitations.

If you want access and or copies of any of your personal data or if you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal data, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we send you a copy/a third party a copy your relevant personal data in a reusable format please contact the Data Protection Officer in writing using their contact details above.

There is no fee in using any of your above rights, unless your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. We also reserve the right to refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to verify your identity if we have reasonable doubts as to who you are. This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Ensuring our information is up to date and accurate

We want the service provided by us to meet your expectations at all times. Please help us by telling us straightaway if there are any changes to your personal data. If you wish to avail of either of these rights, please contact us at mail@portcu.ie