Data Privacy Notice

We are committed to protecting our members’ privacy. The credit union requires any information marked as mandatory for membership to either meet legal obligations or to enable us to perform our contract with you. Where you are not able to provide us with this information, we may not be able to open an account for you. Where we request further information about you not required for these reasons, we will ask you for your consent.

How we use your personal information

Knowsley Mutual credit union may process, transfer and/or share personal information in the following ways:

For legal reasons

  • confirm your identity
  • perform activity for the prevention of financial crime
  • carry out internal and external auditing
  • record basic information about you on a register of members

For performance of our contract with you

  • deal with your account(s) or run any other services we provide to you;
  • consider any applications made by you;
  • carry out credit checks and to obtain and provide credit references
  • undertake statistical analysis, to help evaluate the future needs of our members and to help manage our business

With your consent

  • maintain our relationship with you including marketing and market research (if you agree to them)

By joining the credit union you agree that we can send you statements, new terms & conditions, information about changes to the way your account(s) operate and notification of our annual general meeting.

Sharing your personal information

We will disclose outside the credit union only:

  • To third parties to help us confirm your identity to comply with money laundering legislation, to cover PEPs & sanctions checking
  • To credit reference agencies and debt recovery agents who may check the information against other databases- private and public- to which they have access to.
  • To any authorities if compelled to do so by law (e.g. HMRC) to fulfil tax compliance obligations.
  • To fraud prevention agencies to help prevent crime or where suspected fraud. To cover HMRC direct recovery of debts programme in the unlikely event it is used.
  • To any persons, including but not limited to, insurers who provide a service or benefits to you or for us in connection with your account. To cover LP/LS insurance.
  • To our suppliers in order for them to provide services to us/and or to you on our behalf.
  • To anyone in connection with a reorganisation or merger of the credit unions business.

Where we send your information

While countries in the European Economic Area all ensure rigorous data protection laws, there are parts of the world that may not be quite so rigorous and do not provide the same quality of legal protection and rights when it comes to your personal information

The credit union does not directly send information to any country outside the European economic area, however, any part receiving personal data may also process, transfer and share it for the purposes set out above and in limited circumstances this may involve sending your information to countries where data protection laws do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK.

For example, when complying with international tax regulations we may be required to report personal information to the HM revenue and customs which may transfer that information to the tax authorities in countries where you or a connected person may be a tax resident.

Retaining your information

The credit union will need to hold your information for various lengths of time depending on what we use your data for. In many cases we will hold this information for a period of time after you have left the credit union.

To read our policy for retaining members data please see (KMCU Retention Policy)

Credit referencing agencies

In order to process credit applications you make we will supply your personal information to credit reference agencies (CRAs) and they will give us information about you, such as about your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace and recover debts and prevent criminal activity.

We will also continue to exchange information about you with CRAs on an ongoing basis, including about your settled accounts and any debts not fully repaid on time. CRAs will share your information with other organisations. Your data will also be linked to the data of your spouse, any joint applicants or other financial associates. This may affect your ability to get credit.

The identities of the CRAs, and the ways in which they use and share personal information, are explained in more detail at:

In addition as you will be using an automated system for credit assessment, GDPR requires you to provide an option for opt out:

The right to restrict processing

In some circumstances you have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data. Those circumstances are:

  • you contest the accuracy of the personal data;
  • processing is unlawful but you oppose erasure;
  • we no longer need the personal data for the purposes of our processing, but you require personal data for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; and
  • you have objected to processing, pending the verification of that objection. Where processing has been restricted on this basis, we may continue to store your personal data.

We will only otherwise process it:

  • with your consent;
  • for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or
  • for the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person;

The right to object to processing

You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation, but only to the extent that the legal basis for the processing is that the data is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party.

If you make such an objection, we will cease to process the personal information unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes (including profiling for direct marketing purposes). If you make such an objection, we will cease to process your personal data for this purpose.

Rights related to automatic processing

We may use automated decision making in processing your personal and financial information to make credit decisions.

It is our policy to manually review automated decisions whenever possible. However, you have the right to request a manual review of the accuracy of any decision we make if you are unhappy with it.

Knowsley Mutual Credit Union Ltd uses a company called NestEgg to process this data on our behalf. NestEgg provides an automated ‘decision’ to help the Credit Union make it easy for members to apply for loans and savings accounts. NestEgg is not responsible for making decisions, they do not see your personal information. Their software makes a recommendation to a loans officer.

When you apply for a loan and / or savings account up to five searches may appear on your credit file. For the purposes of credit scoring, this will typically only affect your credit score as if one credit application were made.

Each of these five ‘footprints’ relate to the different sources of data being used to assess an application; these include the credit report itself and an affordability check. The Credit Union needs to prove the information belongs to you which is when an ID check is required. In cases where an application is made by a new member; the Credit Union will use an ID check and may also run a report to check ownership of any bank account details you may give us. These checks are required by law to prevent money laundering.

Some of these footprints will be in the name of NestEgg and others in the name of the Credit Union.

Right to withdraw consent

To the extent that the legal basis for our processing of your personal information is your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal.

The right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office

If you consider that our processing of your personal information infringes data protection laws, you have a legal right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office which is responsible for data protection in the UK. You can contact them by:

Going to their website at: https://ico.org.uk

Phone on 0303 123 1113

Post to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF

Your right to make a complaint

If you are dissatisfied about the way we manage your privacy and data you can follow our complaints procedure.