Privacy Policy

Last updated: in February 2025.

We understand how important your personal data is and are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

'Personal Data' means any information relating to or which identifies you. This can include items such as your name, address, phone number, identification numbers (such as an account number or your national insurance number), location data or online identifiers. Personal data can be held electronically or in certain paper records.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates the processing of personal data. The GDPR seeks to protect your rights to your personal data by setting out, amongst other things, the conditions under which the processing of personal data is lawful, the rights of data subjects and the standards that organisations that handle personal data must adopt. This Privacy Notice is issued in compliance with GDPR and seeks to explain:

Who we are;
All website addresses covered by this Privacy Notice;
How we collect your personal data;
Why we collect your personal data;
How long we hold the personal data;
The conditions under which we may share it with others;
Overseas processing;
How we keep your personal data secure
Your personal data rights and how to exercise them;
Useful information; and
Any further questions.

1. Who we are

EQ Connect (EQC) provided by Equiniti Limited. Our main business is administration services. Our registered address is Highdown House, Yeoman Way, Worthing, West Sussex, BN99 3HH and our ICO registration number is: Z1028602.

Equiniti Limited is a 'Data Controller'. This means that we are responsible for deciding how and why we hold and use personal data about you.

In this Privacy Notice, 'we', 'us' and 'our' will always mean Equinti Limited, as Data Controller.

If you have any questions about our website, please contact our web team by calling 0371 384 2030 from within the UK or +44 121 415 7047 if you are an international caller.

2. All website addresses covered by this Privacy Notice

EQ Connect - https://www.equiniticonnect.com/

3. How we collect your personal data

We may collect and process the following personal data about you:

Information you provide to us

By filling in forms on our website(s) so that we may contact you;
By corresponding with us by phone, e-mail, live-chat, social media channels or otherwise;
Application/registration forms/identification documentation;
Entering competitions, promotions, or surveys; and
When you report any problem or complaints with our website, products, and services.

Information we collect about you

Information about how you logged on and off of our website(s), including your IP address, information about your visit, your browsing history, and how you use our website. This will include the capture of your location information - please see our Cookie Policy for further information on this;
If you contact us via social media, we may collect details from your social media account.

Information we receive from third parties

As part of our identity and financial crime checking procedures with credit reference agencies, fraud detection agencies and registration or stockbroking industry exchanges;
From third parties when you have instructed or agreed for them to pass information to us, such as

From online advertising networks (for example Google) through whom we place advertisements. The information we obtain varies from network to network. It often summarises the actions of lots of people and so does not enable us to identify you individually. It relates to what you view, click on, and access through websites in their network, including the subject matter of the website you started at and where you subsequently go. It might also include their analysis of your behaviour across the wider internet and a profile of you.
From social networks (for example LinkedIn) where your account privacy settings allow us to validate and complete our records, as well as track information such as displaying and click on advertisements based on previous browsing history on this website.

We do not control the information on you that such networks obtain or the technology they use to do so. This website, like many others, does not track or respond to Do Not Track ('DNT') requests made through browser settings.

EQ Connect does not require or process any special types of data.

Keeping your personal data up to date

The personal data we hold may include your name and email address to enable us to contact you and respond to your enquiries as well as provide you with our products and services.

It is important to us that the personal data we hold about you remains accurate and up to date at all times, but we need your help in doing this. Please update your details within EQ Connect via the 'My Profile' page.

Other people's personal data

The information you give us, or that we collect through your use of our services, may contain your or another person's personal data. If you provide us with information about another person, you confirm that they have appointed you to act for them, they consent to you providing their personal data to us and any processing of their personal data and that you have informed them of our identity and the purpose for which their personal data will be processed - as set out in this Privacy Notice.

4. Why we collect your personal data

In the table below we demonstrate why and how we use your personal data as well as providing the legal reasons which we rely upon.

Under Data Protection legislation we must always have a legal reason for processing your personal data. One of the legal reasons is when we use your personal data for our legitimate interests, this is usually when we have a business reason. However, we must always ensure that we take your interests into consideration too and ensure that the use is fairly balanced. We tell you below when we rely on legitimate interests and what our legitimate interests are.

Type of processing	Purpose of the processing	Lawful basis for the processing of personal data
Provision of services, including the administration and management of customer records.	To manage and operate your account with us to facilitate the provision of services. To respond to any data rights that you invoke. To keep our websites and portals secure and permit you safe access to our services.	With your consent. The performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps, at your request, to enter into such a contract. To comply with legal requirement placed upon us, such as Data Protection legislation. Our legitimate interests, such as the proper administration of our service and business, for example: Keeping our records up to date. Defining types of customers for new products and services. Seeking your consent when we need it to contact you. Operating efficiently. Enabling and monitoring your use of our website and services. To meet our regulatory requirements.

Type of processing

Purpose of the processing

Lawful basis for the processing of personal data

Provision of services, including the administration and management of customer records.

To manage and operate your account with us to facilitate the provision of services. To respond to any data rights that you invoke.

To keep our websites and portals secure and permit you safe access to our services.

With your consent.

The performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps, at your request, to enter into such a contract.

To comply with legal requirement placed upon us, such as Data Protection legislation.

Our legitimate interests, such as the proper administration of our service and business, for example:

Keeping our records up to date.
Defining types of customers for new products and services.
Seeking your consent when we need it to contact you.
Operating efficiently.
Enabling and monitoring your use of our website and services.
To meet our regulatory requirements.

If you choose not to give personal information

We need to collect personal information required by law or under the terms of service you have elected to use. If you choose not to give us the personal data we need, it can mean that we have to cancel or decline a service that you request or have with us. So that you know what information is optional, we make it clear at the time we collect your personal data.

5. How long we hold your personal data for

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary for us to achieve the purpose for which we obtained your personal data. We will then either securely delete it or anonymise it so that it cannot be linked back to you. We review our retention periods for personal data on a regular basis.

We will retain personal data:

When an Investor user closes their account, or a corporate account is deleted, their details will be removed at the end of the day in which the account was closed.
If an account has not been accessed for 10 years, it will be deleted

We can keep your data for longer than stated above if we cannot delete it for legal, regulatory, or technical reasons. We can also keep it for anonymised research or statistical purposes. If we do, we will make sure that your privacy is protected and only use it for those purposes.

For full details of our retention policies, please contact us.

6. The conditions under which we may share your personal data with others

The personal data we hold about you is confidential, and we will only share your personal data to enable us to deliver our product(s) or service(s), examples are as follows:

At your request, or with your consent;
Other Equiniti Group companies who help us deliver our products and services, such as Equiniti India;
Non-Equiniti entities, in connection with running accounts and services for you, including:

Service suppliers to facilitate website, email, IT and administration services; and
Our professional advisors, for example, our lawyers and technology consultants, when they need it to provide advice to us.

We will only transfer your personal information to trusted third parties who provide sufficient security guarantees and who demonstrate a commitment to compliance with applicable law and this policy. Where third parties are processing personal information on our behalf, they will be required to agree, by contractual means, to process the personal information in accordance with the applicable law. This contract will stipulate, amongst other things, that the third party and its representatives shall act only on our instructions, or as permitted by law.

We are also required to share your personal data with external third parties as follows (but not limited to):We are also required to share your personal data with external third parties as follows (but not limited to):

Regulators and supervisory authorities e.g. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO),
Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System (Cifas) - as part of our legal obligations;
Where the law requires or permits disclosure, or there is a duty to the public to reveal it;
When we need to defend or exercise our legal rights or those of a third party;
Debt collecting, debt chasing or another agent for enforcing payment of monies owed to us;
Efforts to trace you if we lose contact with you;
Police and other law enforcement agencies for the prevention and detection of crime and where a valid permission is applicable;
As a result of a court order or other regulatory instruction; and
Our insurers and insurance brokers where required for underwriting our risks and as part of ongoing risk assessments.

We may transfer your personal data to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation. At all times, we take steps to ensure your privacy rights continue to be protected as per this Privacy Notice.

7. Overseas Processing

Equiniti use data processors who are third parties providing services to us. We have contracts in place with our data processors which means they cannot do anything with your personal data unless we have instructed them to do it in order to deliver that service to us and if applicable, to you. Some third parties are outside of the UK or EEA which may mean that personal data is transferred or accessed where those third parties (processors) operate, such as:

Personal data will be shared with members of the Equiniti Group outside of the UK including Equiniti India Private Limited which is based in India, for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice.
When we contact you via email or you use our microsites to contact us, one of our service providers has operations outside of the UK.

Whenever Equiniti transfers personal data outside of the UK or EEA, it relies on:

Adequacy Decisions – as adopted by the European Commission (Art. 45 of EU GDPR) or as adopted by UK Secretary of State (Art. 45 of UK GDPR / Section 17A of the Data Protection Act 2018)
The European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (‘SCCs’) and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s International Data Transfer Addendum (‘IDTA’)

As required under UK GDPR and EU GDPR, Equiniti performs Transfer Risk Assessments (‘TRAs’) / Transfer Impact Assessments (‘TIAs’) for any transfers made outside of the UK and EEA which are continually monitored and subject to periodic review to ensure personal data is protected. If you would like any further details about transfers of your personal data, then please contact our Data Protection Officer using the details provided at the end of this Privacy Notice.

By using our Service, you agree to this international transfer, storing and processing.

8. How we keep your personal data secure

We understand how important your personal data is to you and we take its security very seriously.

We safeguard your personal data across all our computer systems, networks, websites, and offices as much as possible through appropriate procedures and technical security measures (including strict encryption, anonymisation and archiving techniques) and our Information Security policies are aligned to ISO27001, which is an internationally recognised security standard.

We also use secure ways of communicating with you such as when collecting your personal data or providing your account information:

online through the use of ‘‘https’’ and other security and encryption protocols. This is indicated by a lock icon on the bottom of the web browser, or the address will include the letters https in the top left-hand corner; and
before we discuss matters relating to your account(s) by telephone we will always ask you security questions to confirm your identity

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password or unique identifier (PIN) which enables you to access certain parts of online services, you are responsible for keeping this password / PIN confidential, along with any username. We will never ask for your full password or PIN, and you must not divulge your full password to us or anyone else. We recommend that any password or PIN you set is not easily guessable and changed frequently (at least once a month).

Because we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of personal data sent on the internet you should never send your login details via email.

Security concerns

If you ever receive a communication from us by post, email or by phone that you are concerned it is not genuine, please contact us using the contact details in Section 11.

You must immediately inform us if you become aware, or suspect, that someone else has knowledge of your account details.

If you have any concerns about the security of your own personal computers and mobile devices, we suggest you read the advice of Get Safe Online, which can be accessed atwww.getsafeonline.org.

9. Your personal data rights and how to exercise them

You have rights in respect of the personal data that we hold about you. They include the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you, to know about any automated decisions that are made about you and to change your marketing preferences at any time. Details about all of your rights are provided below.

Some of these rights are conditional and depend upon why we are processing your personal data. This means that we cannot always be able to respond to your request in the way that you want. For example:

If you ask us to erase your personal data and we are processing the information because we are required to do so because of a legal requirement, we will not be able to delete your personal data; however,
If you ask us to erase your personal data and we are processing the information because you provided us with consent (for example as part of a survey response), we will be able to consider and respond to your request.

Your rights	Explanatory detail
The right to be informed about how we use your personal data.	This Privacy Notice provides you with the details on how we use and process your data.
The right of access to a copy of any personal data processed about you, together with certain additional information	If you request to see your personal data, your initial request will be free of charge; subsequent requests may attract an administration fee. The additional information includes details of the categories and recipients of the personal data. Providing the rights and freedoms of others are not affected, we will supply to you a copy of your personal data.
The right to request us to rectify or update it.	This will be relevant where the personal data we hold is or has become inaccurate or incomplete, taking into account the purposes of the processing. Please explain why you consider the data inaccurate or incomplete.
The right to request us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances.	The circumstances when erasure can apply include when we no longer need it to meet a lawful basis for processing unless that basis is consent and you withdraw your consent, or you object to the processing, or the processing is unlawful. However, certain exclusions apply - where the processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
The right to request us to restrict processing it.	This request can be used to stop us processing your personal data: if you disagree over the accuracy of the personal data until we have verified the data; the reason for processing; or if you wish us to retain your personal data for longer than our retention period, e.g. to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.
The right to request a copy of your information for data portability purposes.	If you have provided personal data to us under contract or because you consented to the processing and use the data by automated means, then you have the right to instruct us to transmit that personal data to you or another data controller in a machine-readable format.
The right to object to us processing your personal data.	You have a right to object to us processing your data where we are processing it for the purpose of legitimate interests. You can also object to direct marketing communications from us about products, offers, competitions, or services and any profiling that we can perform in relation to direct marketing. You can do this at the point of data collection, through the use of any opt-out functionality on text and emails, via your preference centre or by contacting the helpline service. You can update your marketing preferences at any time through the use of the opt-out functionality. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal. If you would like to receive the marketing described above, please ensure you have indicated your preferences accordingly.
Rights related to decisions based solely on automated processing	Where this processing produces legal effects or significantly affects you, you can object to this processing unless the processing is necessary as part of our contract or is required by legislation.
Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.	If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, please contact our Data Protection team who will investigate the matter and report back to you. If you remain unsatisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you are able to contact the data protection authority in your country. In the UK, it is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) who regulates Data Controllers compliance with data protection legislation. They can be contacted by email: casework@ico.org.uk, post: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF or by telephone: 0303 123 1113.

10. Useful information

10.1 - Children (16 years and under) and Vulnerable Adults

We are committed to the privacy protection of children and vulnerable adults. If you are aged 16 or under, and we need to process your personal data, you must obtain the permission of your parent/guardian before you share your personal data with us. If we are notified that you are a vulnerable adult we will liaise with your authorised representative, once we are in receipt of the appropriate permissions.

10.2 - Use of 'cookies'

For full details of how we use cookies, please refer to this website's cookies policy.

10.3 - Links to other websites

Our websites can contain links to other websites run by other organisations, or other Equiniti Group companies. When you are on another website, we encourage you to read their privacy policies as they will take precedence over this Privacy Notice.

10.4 - Social media, blogs, reviews, and similar services

Any social media posts or comments you make to us (e.g. on our own Facebook page) will be shared under the terms of the relevant social media platform (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) on which they are made and could be made public by that platform. These platforms are controlled by other organisations, and so we are not responsible for this sharing. You should review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the social media platforms you use to ensure you understand how they will use your information, what information relating to you they will place in the public domain and how you can stop them from doing so if you are unhappy about it.

Any blog, review or other posts or comments you make about us, our products and Services on any of our blog, review or user community services will be shared with all other members of that service and the public at large.

You are responsible for ensuring that any comments you make comply with any relevant policy on acceptable use of those services.

10.5 - Changes to this Privacy Notice

We review our use of your personal data regularly. In doing so, we can change what personal data we collect, how we keep it and what we do with it. As a result, we can change this Privacy Notice from time to time to keep it relevant and up to date.

We will endeavour to alert you to these changes so that you can check you are happy with it before proceeding any further. Please look out for notices from us alerting you to these changes, via our websites or other timely communications. If you use our websites and see such an alert, please take a moment to ensure that you're happy with any changes.

By continuing to use our products and services, you will be bound by this Privacy Notice.

However, we will also tell you of the changes where required by law to do so.

This policy was issued on February 2025.

11. Any further questions about this Privacy Notice

We hope that this Privacy Notice has been helpful in setting out how we handle your personal data and your rights to control it. If you have any questions that remain unanswered, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

By email - at DPO@equiniti.com,
By post - at Data Protection Officer, PO Box 5243, Worthing, BN99 9FY; or

EU Representative - (Based in Poland)

+44 121-415-0196
m.mackowska-mortyz@kochanski.pl