Our contact details

Auctus Advisors LLP (‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’) gather and process your personal information in accordance with this privacy notice and in compliance with the relevant data protection regulation and laws. This notice provides you with the necessary information regarding your rights and our obligations, and explains how, why and when we process your personal data.

We are a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under partnership number OC429983. Our registered office is at Robsacks, Long Barn Road, Weald, Sevenoaks, Kent TN14 6NJ.  We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.  Our principal point of contact for data protection matters is Jonathan Wright, who can be contacted telephone +44 (0)7711 627449 and email jww@auctusadvisors.co.uk.

What type of information we have

We process your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than as specified in this notice. The personal data that we collect from you may include:

Information you provide us

You may provide us with personal data when you are introduced to us, when we meet you in person, or when we are in contact by phone, email, via our website and when you register on the website or otherwise.  The categories of personal data you provide includes:

• first and last name;

• job title and company name;

• email address;

• phone number;

• postal address;

• demographic information;

• password to register and use restricted parts of our website.

Information we collect from third parties

We collect most of this information from you directly. We also work in conjunction with third parties (including, for example, business partners, professional advisors, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

We also collect information about you:

• from publicly accessible sources, e.g. Companies House;

• from third party sources of information, e.g. client due diligence providers;

• which you have made public on websites associated with you or your company or on social media platforms such as LinkedIn;

• from a third party, e.g. a person who has introduced you to us or other professionals (such as solicitors) you may engage.

How we get the information and why we do we have it

We may collect personal information about you in a number of circumstances, including:

• when you or your organisation seek advice or services from us;

• when you or your organisation browse, make an enquiry or otherwise interact on our website;

• when you attend a seminar or another event or sign up to receive personal data from us; or

• when you or your organisation offer to provide or provide services to us.

In some circumstances, we collect personal data about you from a third party source. For example, we may collect personal data from your organisation, other organisations with whom you have dealings, government agencies, a credit-reporting agency, an information or service provider or from a publicly available record.

What we do with the information

We take your privacy very seriously and will never disclose, share or sell your data without your consent, unless required to do so by law or regulation. We only retain your data for as long as is necessary and for the purpose(s) specified in this notice. Where you have consented to us providing you with promotional offers and marketing, you are free to withdraw this consent at any time.

The purposes and reasons for processing your personal data are detailed below.

We may use your personal data for the following purposes only (“Permitted Purposes”):

• providing advice or other services or things instructed or requested by you or your organisation;

• managing and administering your or your organisation’s business relationship with us, including processing payments, accounting, auditing, billing and collection, support services;

• compliance with our legal or regulatory obligations (such as record keeping obligations), compliance screening or recording obligations (e.g. trade sanction and embargo laws, for anti-money laundering, financial and credit check and fraud and crime prevention and detection purposes), which may include automated checks of your contact data or other information you provide about your identity against applicable sanctioned-party lists and contacting you to confirm your identity in case of a potential match or recording interaction with you which may be relevant for compliance purposes;

• to analyse and improve our services and communications to you;

• protecting the security of and managing access to our premises, IT and communication systems, online platforms, websites and other systems, preventing and detecting security threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activities;

• for insurance purposes;

• for monitoring and assessing compliance with our policies and standards;

• to identify persons authorised to trade on behalf of our clients, customers, suppliers and/or service providers;

• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and requests anywhere in the world, including reporting to and/or being audited by national and international regulatory bodies;

• to comply with court orders and exercises and/or defend our legal rights; and

• for any purpose related and/or ancillary to any of the above or any other purpose for which your personal data was provided to us.

In line with our legitimate interests, we may process your personal data for the following purposes:

• communicating with you through the channels you have approved to keep you up to date on the latest market developments, announcements, and other information about our services and products as well as our hospitality or other events;

• customer surveys, marketing campaigns, market analysis, sweepstakes, contests or other promotional activities or events; or

• collecting information about your preferences to create a user profile to personalise and foster the quality of our communication and interaction with you (for example, by way of website analytics).

With regard to marketing-related communication, we will provide you with the opportunity to opt out anytime if you do not want to receive further marketing-related communication from us. We will not use your personal data for taking any automated decisions affecting you or creating profiles other than described above.

Depending on for which of the above Permitted Purposes we use your personal data, we may process your personal data on one or more of the following legal grounds:

• because processing is necessary for the performance of a client instruction or other contract with you or your organisation;

• to comply with our legal obligations; or

• because processing is necessary for purposes of our legitimate interest or those of any third party recipients that receive your personal data, provided that such interests are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.

In addition, the processing may be based on your consent where you have expressly given that to us.

Your rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

• Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information;

• Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete;

• Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

• Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.

• Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

• Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Sharing and disclosing your personal information

We do not share or disclose any of your personal information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement. We use third-parties to provide the below services and business functions; however, all processors acting on our behalf only process your data in accordance with instructions from us and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

We disclose and share personal information:

• with our directors, staff, agents and consultants based in the UK;

• with other professional advisers and third parties in accordance with your instructions;

• with our professional indemnity insurers, our auditors and payroll service providers;

• with third party processors, service providers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient, including for our IT services, data storage/back-up and marketing;

• with companies providing services for money laundering checks, credit risk reduction and other fraud and crime prevention purposes and companies providing similar services, including financial institutions, credit reference agencies and regulatory bodies with whom such personal information is shared;

• if we, acting in good faith, consider disclosure to be required by law or the rules of any applicable governmental, regulatory or professional body including the FCA and the London Stock Exchange; and

• we may also use aggregated personal data and statistics for the purpose of monitoring website usage in order to help us develop our website and our services.

Certain laws (for example, those relating to money laundering and tax fraud) give power to authorities such as the police or the tax authorities to inspect clients’ information and take copies of documents. It is possible that, at any time, we may be requested by those authorities to provide them with access to your information in connection with the work we have done for you. If this happens, we will comply with the request only to the extent that we are bound by law and, in so far as it is allowed, we will notify you of the request or provision of information.

We may transfer personal data to a successor firm or company, which acquires the business carried on by us. If this happens, we shall ensure that you are notified of the transfer and we shall secure a commitment from the firm or company to which we transfer personal data to comply with applicable data protection laws.

International Transfers

To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to transfer and store your personal data outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) as follows:

• with our service providers located outside the EEA;

• if you are based outside the EEA;

• where there is an international aspect to the Services we have been asked to provide.

Where personal data is transferred to and stored outside the EEA, we take steps to provide appropriate safeguards to protect your personal data, including:

• transferring your personal data to a country, territory, sector or international organisation which the European Commission has determined ensures an adequate level of protection, as permitted under Article 45(1) GDPR;

• entering into standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, obliging recipients to protect your personal data as permitted under Article 46(2)(c) GDPR;

• under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework which enables U.S. business to self-certify as a means of complying with EU data protection laws;

In the absence of an adequacy decision or of appropriate safeguards as referenced above, we will only transfer personal data to a third country where one of the following applies (as permitted under Article 49 GDPR)):

• the transfer is necessary for the performance of our contractual engagement with you;

• the transfer is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or

• you have provided explicit consent to the transfer.

Safeguarding measures

We take your privacy seriously and take every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal data. We work hard to protect you and your information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction and have several layers of security measures in place, including:

• hard copy information files are restricted to authorised individuals;

• we use, as appropriate, encryption, firewalls, access controls, policies and other procedures to protect information from unauthorised access;

• we will take appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your personal data confidential and secure in accordance with our internal procedures covering the storage, disclosure of and access to personal data. Personal data may be kept on our personal data technology systems, those of our contractors or in paper files.

How long we keep your data

We only ever retain personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet these obligations.

Where you have consented to us using your details for direct marketing, we will keep such data until you notify us otherwise and/or withdraw your consent.

Lodging a complaint

We only process your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and in accordance with the relevant data protection laws. If, however you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Changes to this policy

We may change this policy from time to time. The current version of this policy will always be available from us in hard copy or on our website.

This policy was last updated on 1 September 2022.