Privacy Statement and Cookie Policy

Privacy Statement

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 [email protected].

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.

Cookies Policy

A “cookie” is a bite-sized piece of data that is stored on your computer’s hard drive. They are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.

We use them to track your activity to help ensure you get the smoothest possible experience when visiting our website but the information does not usually identify you directly. We can use the information from cookies to ensure we present you with options tailored to your preferences on your next visit. We can also use cookies to analyse traffic and for advertising purposes.

These also include social media plug-ins which enable you to share our website content via your social media account(s) or easily share information with others. We have a presence on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if you click on any of these icons on our website, you will be taken to our pages or profiles on those platforms. The platforms may then start tracking your behaviour using cookies for their own purposes; for example, to better understand your interests so that they can present relevant content or advertising to you. Data about you may also be transmitted to the social media channel even if you do not click on the plug-in. The social media platforms will provide us with statistical information, which we use to help understand how you and our other users interact with our social medial presence. All these platforms provide you with some control over their use of non-essential tracking technology and you can find details of how to exercise this control by reviewing their privacy and cookie notices. We have contractual arrangements in place with the social media channels we use. Please contact us for more information.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information generally on cookies, including how to disable them, please refer to aboutcookies.org. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer.

Below we describe the cookies which are installed upon this website.

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clicking on the icon at the bottom left of this webpage. You can then adjust the available sliders to “On” or “Off” and then click “Save and close”. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.

Alternatively, most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

If you use a smart phone, you can usually prevent cross-site tracking and block cookies in the settings section on your device. You may also be able to visit websites without leaving a history by turning private browsing on. You should visit the support section of the website of your device for more information on how to do this.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are always active and are necessary for this website to function. They cannot be switched off. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences.

You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

Function Provider	Cookie Name	Data Stored	Purpose	Duration
www.auctusadvisors.co.uk	PHPSESSID	Works by creating a unique id (UID) for each visitor and stores variables based on this UID.	Session cookie	When browsing session ends.
	moove_gdpr_popup		Cookie set by the UK cookie consent plugin to record that you accept the fact that the site uses cookies.
	pum-*		These control the repeated display of popups in the browser. Cookies are assigned an identification (ID) number formatted as ‘pum-{integer}’.	14 days
BrighterIR	AWSALB, AWSALBCORS		Cookie set by Amazon Web Services Load Balancer to preserve server session stickiness.	1 week
	XSRF-TOKEN		Cookie set by Laravel framework to protect against cross-site exploits.	2 hours
	Laravel_session		Cookie set by Laravel framework to preserve session data on investor relations tools.	2 hours

Performance cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular, and see how visitors move around the site.

All information that is collected by these cookies is aggregated, and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.

These cookies are set by the Google Analytics service, but hosted by Auctus Advisors.

Host	Cookie Name	Duration
www.auctusadvisors.co.uk	_ga	1 year
www.auctusadvisors.co.uk	_gat	1 minute
www.auctusadvisors.co.uk	_gid	24 hours

Targeting cookies

We do not currently use targeting cookies.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you require further information please contact us by emailing [email protected].

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above and with business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you, and credit reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your credit score where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

External Third Parties as set out below.
Specific third parties such as HMRC.
Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

External Third Parties

Service providers acting as processors based in the UK who provide Investor Registrar services, Nominated Adviser and Broker services, and marketing services.
Professional advisers based in the UK who provide banking, legal, insurance, accounting and auditing services and company secretarial services.
HMRC, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
Fraud prevention agencies, credit reference agencies, HM Courts & Tribunals Service.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes, and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. If you require further information please contact us by emailing [email protected].

6. International Transfers

We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) to be used by any other party. We do however use US-based cloud email and storage system providers. This will therefore involve transferring your data outside the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data outside the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe.
Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US.

If you require further information please contact us by emailing [email protected].

7. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using SSL technology. Of course, data transmission over the Internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the Internet. You are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will not ask you for your password.

In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data Retention and Storage

HOW LONG WILL YOU USE MY PERSONAL DATA FOR?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We review the personal data that we hold every 12 months.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for accounting, tax and legal purposes. This also helps us, for example, in the event that there is a complaint about our Services, to respond to you in full.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available from us by emailing us at [email protected].

In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data: see “Request erasure” below for further information.

In other circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

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 successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at [email protected] with specific details of who to contact for subject access rights.

NO FEE USUALLY REQUIRED

Data Subjects have the right to access their personal data and supplementary information. The right of access allows individuals to be aware of and verify the lawfulness of the processing.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive, or requires copies of previously provided information. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

In the event of manifestly unfair or excessive requests, we may refuse to respond to the request and any such refusal will be notified to the requester with a reason for the refusal and, in addition, information as to your rights to complain to the ICO or judicial authority within one month of such a request being received.

WHAT WE MAY NEED FROM YOU

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

TIME LIMIT TO RESPOND

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.